


On A Day Like This

by oxymoronic



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Apocalypse, Big Bang Challenge, Friends to Lovers, Long, M/M, Original Character(s), Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-24
Updated: 2012-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-31 16:49:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxymoronic/pseuds/oxymoronic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim misses that shuttle from Riverside; everything else follows, including the end of the Earth. Written for STBB:09.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at my LJ [here](http://oxymoronic.livejournal.com/74272.html).
> 
> Written as part of Star Trek Big Bang 2009. There are a grand total of 4 different allusions/homages explicitly in here. Find them all and I'll give you... idk. Porn? Cookies?

**Stardate: 2255**

**Iowa**

Jim wakes just after dawn. He sits up, burns his hand on a broken bulb and falls off the table he’s been sleeping on. Shipyard Bar is never classy, even at the best of times, and after the mess Jim made last night this hardly counts at the best of times; through the window, the seven-thirty gloom reflects off a million badly-chosen tacky vibrant choices in interior design. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he’s wearily certain of everything else; _oh-eight-hundred-hours_ is drifting repeatedly through his head, in asynchrony with his pulse, and it hits him that Riverside Shipyard is, at its best, even with _his_ bike, an hour’s drive away.

He palms the saltshaker on the way out and kicks up his bike and makes it there in forty-five.

 

 

Cinematically speaking, it’d be impressive for Jim to hurtle into the shipyard just in time to see the shuttle dwindling off into the pinked sky. In reality, Jim arrives a full quarter of an hour after the shuttle’s departed, but still swings off his bike, kicks off the engine and sets off in a jog around the shipyard, scanning around for any insignia, any sign of the shuttle. He keeps this up for a couple of minutes before he stops beside a grubby, balding engineer, working doggedly on a pile of rubble and haphazard shuttle parts. His badge proclaims in a cheery, cursive font that he’s _Happy to Help_. “I missed the recruitment shuttle, right?”

“Starfleet?” The engineer pauses, swaps his buzzing spanner head for a smaller model in his open toolbox and, after a while, nods. “Been gone a good while now.” It’s only a confirmation, but the news still prickles unpleasantly under the skin, and Jim turns his face upwards into the morning sunlight. As he looks back down, fishing in his pocket for his bike keys, the engineer looks at him. “Are you alright, kid? There's a hell of a lot of blood on that shirt.”

Jim ignores him. His nose is starting to beat an aching rhythm in the middle of his face, and he wonders if it’s broken. He turns, more than a little dispirited, and starts trudging back to his bike, but he stops halfway, calling back to the engineer. “When’s the next one going to leave?”

“From here?” The engineer shrugs. “Not for another year. We’re in the middle of bumfuck, nowhere; Starfleet hardly makes regular welcome calls.”

Jim lets it hit him; he’s there for another _year_. He lets his eyes slide around the shipyard; his fingers are already stinging with humidity and sweat, and it’s not even half eight – it’s always hot, and there’s always too much water. “Mother _fucker_ ,” he says quietly.

The engineer’s doing his best to be helpful. “I’m pretty sure there’s another leaving from Cooperstown in a couple days – ”

“Cooperstown?” Jim echoes, raising an eyebrow. “That’s out of state – how the fuck am I meant to get the money to go to Cooperstown?” His mom could probably lend him something – probably, but there’s no way in hell he’ll ever ask. He’s not even sure he wants her to know what he’s planning to do; it might just break her heart.

The engineer gives him a slow look. “Look – I’m sorry you missed your flight, kid, but you’re better off here than dead in space anyway.”

Jim stops in the office on his way out, and when he leaves he has a job for the next six months and an uneasy feeling in his mind.

 

 

His mom gives, as always, an unreserved, beatific smile when she sees him walk through her kitchen door.

“I’m glad they let you get a job again.” She’s cleaning Frank’s old, battered phaser; the trigger had caught while he was shooting rats in the back yard. He’d driven to town for a new one; she’d bet him a dozen credits she’d have it fixed by the time he got back. She sets it down to Jim’s left, and fetches Frank’s toolkit, snapping it open. “Especially after everything you did the last time you worked there.”

“Not that it was my fault.”

She chuckles. “It’s _never_ your fault.” She sets about methodically snapping pieces off the phaser, polishing them absently as she does.

“Yeah, well.” He sighs, picks up a remote piece of the dismantled phaser and clicks it between his fingers. “I’m stuck here for another year at least.”

She pauses for a moment, and sets the barrel down on the table. “You were at the shipyard for the recruitment shuttle, weren’t you?”

“Yeah.” He coughs, moving a little uneasily in his chair. “But I kind of overslept.”

His mom lets out a long laugh and shoots him an amused look, clipping loose the battery with a plastic noise and placing it onto the table. “I did wonder why you were sat at my dinner table and not in orbit already.”

“San Francisco is hardly orbit.” He licks his lips, slowly, and pushes his piece along the table, watching as she clicks it back into place without a sound.

“I know that look, James T. Kirk. I’m _thinking_. Give me a minute.” She pushes the trigger back in place, clips the metal casing over the top and, turning in her chair, shoots at a pot plant outside the window, leaving a dirty brown scorch mark an inch deep through the lawn. She puts the reassembled phaser down on the table and runs her fingers along the metal, glancing up with a sigh. “I’d have been stupid not to have seen it coming. You wanting to follow in our footsteps, I mean.” She leans back and tucks her hair behind her ear, eyes flicking briefly to the window, thinking a noise on the sideroad heralded her husband’s return. “You’re too clever to lay bricks for the rest of your life – even if you hate to admit it – and too goddamn restless to wind up as an ambassador or a lawyer.” She smiles softly at him, playing with her fingers on the table, tripping them elegantly over each other. “You’ll get promoted quickly, in any rate, and everyone knows it’s the Ensigns that always bite the dust.”

He feels a little smile grow in the corner of his mouth. “You’re not going to tell me to be careful? Mind my step?”

She loses a little of the playfulness in her face, and glances down at the tablecloth. “Space is dangerous, Jim. We both just have to remember you’re not as stupid as you look, and neither was your father.” She runs her fingers along the back of his hand, cool and steady. “What killed your father was one in a million, something that’s never been seen before, something that we couldn’t have possibly planned for in a thousand years.” She sighs, and her eyes shine when she looks back up again. “What you have to remember about being in space, Jim, is that, as a wise man once put it, million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”

 

 

  
**Stardate: 2256**   


The call isn’t unexpected, and his mom’s voice is steady on the other end of the line. “Frank’s dead, Jim.” He ends the transmission.

She’s sat alone in the kitchen when he arrives, an hour or so after he spoke to her. He makes her tea, because it always calms her nerves, and sits down opposite, running the back of his nail across his thumb.

Frank’s heart had been on the way out for just under a year; he’d claimed he’d spent too much of his life eating and being angry, but Jim’s mom always said that he’d always just cared too much. Twenty-third century medicine, and the figurative heart is still more important – and more difficult to fix – than the literal one. “When did it happen?”

“Yesterday,” she replies. “I was helping in the sanctuary at Elkhart and they couldn’t reach me till this morning.”

“His heart?”

“Yeah.” Her fingers pat the side of the mug. “When’s the shuttle meant to be leaving?”

“Tomorrow.” His bag’s almost packed, he’s resigned at work – he’d even written to Pike in a short, choppy missive to say he’d be arriving, though there’d been no reply. “Forget it,” Jim says, finally. “I’m staying for the funeral. Screw Starfleet; they can survive without me for another year.”

She begins to tremble a little, her fingers curling into tight little fists, and Jim knows he’s never made a wiser decision.

 

 

The funeral is a quiet, pleasant affair, with the usual foray of unsympathetic spouses and the grieving faces of family members showing, very clearly, it’s all just sinking in. For Frank, who, despite the occasional outburst (which were, in retrospect, generally Jim’s fault anyway) had been perfectly calm, normal and above all completely adverse to adventure, it’s pretty much the perfect funeral. “It was a lovely day,” his mother announces as he sees the last relative to the door. “It was perfect.” Jim hums a soft agreement and comes to stand behind her chair, running his fingers across her tiny shoulders. She shudders a little under his touch, and sighs. “I want to do it again, Jim,” she says softly, and Jim follows her eyes to the window, to the sky. “Just one more time.”

 

 

His mom stands in the doorstep, a bag in each hand and one on her back, and surveys him with a small smile. “You promise you’ll be okay?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

She laughs, her fingers fidgeting with the straps around her right fist. “I’ll call you when I get to Indianapolis.” The driver she’s hired has biomechanical arms, and Jim watches as he places her bags effortlessly in the trunk. “It’s going to be weird, being off-planet again,” she says finally. “I haven’t done it since our anniversary.”

Jim watches a line flicker beside her mouth. His mother is strong, but sometimes she runs away. “You got everything you need?”

“Yeah.”

He walks her to the cab, handing her the final bag after she climbs inside, and her smile stretches up at him from inside the window. “Okay,” he says, slowly, and smiles. “This is it.”

Her eyes shine with mischief. “Tell me you’ll miss me.”

He grins. “You know I never will.”

Her hand brushes his, just briefly. “Bye, Jim. Thanks.”

“No problem.” He walks backward into the doorway and watches her drive away.

 

 

  
**Stardate: 2257**   


His mom calls him from Galorda Prime, three days before the shuttle is due back in Riverside Shipyard.

It isn’t unusual for her to call him; she normally does every time she moves planets, or does something spectacular she’s always wanted to do. She misses him, he can tell, and the farmhouse he’d sold on her behalf, but most of all she misses her husbands. Plural.

This time, though, they both know the motive is different, and they both know exactly what it is. “I don’t want you gone,” she says suddenly, eyes snapping up off her lap to lock with his. “Not while I’m not there.”

_you feel like you were made for something different?_

“Don’t worry, mom,” he replies coolly. “I wasn’t planning on going anyway.” He doesn’t mention how stupid her statement is – her being on planet, after all, still wouldn’t change the fact he still had to move to San Francisco, and wouldn’t be living with her anymore. It’s the perfect escape route for his own misgivings.

It’s been two years since Pike had met him, and Jim’s highly doubtful he even remembers his name. He’s had two empty years as a reality check.

He licks his lips and sighs as he looks at the blank screen.

_something special?_

 

 

  
**Stardate: 2258**   


Jim sits crosslegged in front of the viewscreen and smiles across at his mom. She arrived in Vulcana Regar the night before, and from the sounds of it has had a pretty interesting day. “Honestly, Jim, it’s beautiful here. You should come pay me a visit sometime soon.”

Jim feels his smile grow a little. “I can’t believe you managed to settle down in the only place in the universe hotter than Iowa.”

She arcs an eyebrow. “Iowa’s nowhere near hot, Jim – there are places in the _States_ hotter than Iowa. There’re plains here stretching for miles made of pure lava; the heat’s enough to burn your hair off.”

“You’d make an awful saleswoman, you know that?”

She chuckles. “I guess I am just proving your point.” She twines her fingers through the end of her ponytail. “But you promise you’ll come see me soon?”

“Of course I will. Problem being, I have _responsibilities_ I can’t just drop and come running.”

He watches her eyes glitter with amusement. “Look at you, all grown up.” She sighs. “I am proud of you.”

His smile widens. “You don’t have to sound so begrudging when you say it.”

She doesn’t mention the shuttle, due, as Jim’s fully aware, in the shipyard eight-ay-em-sharp tomorrow morning; she doesn’t have to. She thinks it’s completely off the cards, and Jim’s still torn in disillusion over whether it might not be.

“Idiot.” She yawns, kneading one eye with her hand. “I’m going to get some sleep; some of us haven’t been on our lazy asses all day.”

“Screw you,” he murmurs, and terminates the link with a smile.

 

 

Jim walks out of the bathroom, biting down on a cleaning capsule, and shuts his mouth to let the foam explode inside. He spits in the sink and uses a handful of water to rinse his mouth out, and turns around to pump up the sound on the holofeed. It’s well after ten am, a good two hours since this year’s recruitment shuttle has left, and Jim’s head is foggy from too much sleep and the usual tinge of remorse.

He sinks down on the sofa and frowns at the holoscreen, trying to make sense of the news report. He can tell straight away something is wrong, something bad – the feed’s filled with reporters shouting and waving, flicking back and forth between sombre interviewer and confused expert, and every now and then it switches to a pulsing white dot on a black background which flashes bright and disappears.

_“In the worst natural disaster in over a century, the destruction of Vulcan has seen the loss of over six billion inhabitants. Also destroyed in the disaster were eight Federation starships, though the location of one remaining ship is still unknown.”_

Jim throws up in the bathroom, his mouth stinging minty-fresh.

 

 

His hands are still shaking when he does up the rucksack, slinging it across his back. He counts through the handful of credits he has at home, and mentally adds it to the amount in his account, gnawing absentmindedly on his lip. He could fifty-fifty the money, half on enough juice for his bike to get to Cooperstown, half on a ticket to San Francisco. The recruitment shuttle will be a free ride, but there’s no guarantee he’ll get to Cooperstown in time to catch one, especially when he doesn’t even know when or how often shuttles leave. It’s a good day’s ride, maybe more if he makes pit stops – but something about the set of his fists and the jumble of his head tells him he should just drive.

 

 

He ends up spending the night in Crookston, Minnesota, just shy of the border. He rides three buses terminus-to-terminus, mends a broken swing in the playground at the back of his motel and doesn’t eat dinner.

 

 

At the start of the twenty-third century, Starfleet took up Cooperstown as its central shuttleport, mainly because up until the late twenty-second century nothing had ever really happened there. It currently handles most of the traffic in the northern states, including general transport and trade from most of the world and pretty much all of Starfleet’s aerial transportation, complete with frequent shuttle runs to their base in San Francisco.

Jim checks the flight times as soon as he enters the airbase. Predictably, flights to San Francisco run frequently – almost every hour – but free rides for recruits and personnel only run daily, and the one today left half an hour ago. It’s a choice between using his remaining credits to get on the next shuttle over there, or hanging around till tomorrow and getting on the personnel shuttle for nothing.

He pushes his way through to the food lounge and grabs a few handfuls of things sharp, sweet and cheerful; his body hates him for his bike ride, and he takes his time to eat them, debating his options. The next San Francisco flight creeps up the departures list until it drops off the top, and the following one begins its ascent from the bottom, and Jim decides to check on his bike. He’s left it in the airbase’s parking area, mainly because he doesn’t really know what else to with it; he can’t exactly take it to San Francisco – not on this flight, anyway – but he doesn’t want it to rot in a sewer.

It’s not quite summer in North Dakota, so the weather isn’t at any extreme; cold, hot and fuggy, but sharp in the air, and Jim flexes his fingers as he steps outside the artificially-sustained airbase. He sits across the saddle of his bike and lets his feet scuff on the ground, dragging little half-circles against the synthetic floor.

There’s a guards’ office a couple of hundred feet away from his parking bay, and in the good-natured way of forced colleagues everywhere, the two insiders are bickering.

“It’s Vulcans,” one decides.

“It can’t be Vulcans, you idiot; their planet got blown up yesterday, in case you forgot.”

Jim flicks the keys out of his bike and walks along to the office door. The first guard leans in again. “Exactly,” he says promptly, and waves his finger. “They’re out for revenge.”

The second guard snorts. “Revenge for what? It was a natural disaster, asshole.”

Jim leans against the doorway and settles his eyes on the muted holoscreen. “What is it?”

The guards turn to look at him. “Vulcans,” the first replies, and the second hits him with a clipboard.

The feed jumps from a reporter to a full-screen satellite image of a ship hanging over Earth. It’s huge – one of the biggest Jim’s ever seen – and it’s hideously complex. The Federation goes for small, silver and quick, but most of all it goes for PR-friendly, easy on the eye. This ship looks like an explosion in a shrapnel factory, and the camera gives it a green, uneasy hue that sets Jim’s teeth on edge.

It also just happens to be suspended over Starfleet’s main base of operations.

“That’s not Vulcan,” Jim says slowly.

“I told you,” the second guard adds smugly, and hits the first with a clipboard again.

Jim cuts across the ensuing argument. “How long’s it been there? What’re they saying about it?”

The second guard shrugs. “It appeared about ten minutes ago, and no one knows who it belongs to, or why it’s here. I mean, we know pretty much all of the aerial operations over here, and if we’re none the wiser, well…” He shrugs. “Starfleet’s meant to be issuing a statement sometime soon, if you want to hang around.”

Jim shakes his head. “I’ll manage,” he replies, and walks out of the office.

The airbase is a little warmer when Jim re-enters, and it’s almost amusing to observe the change in the atmosphere around the place. Security’s increased doublefold, and the large holoscreens projecting the newsfeed (company policy, naturally) are doing little to settle the general uneasiness. Jim scans around, spots what he’s looking for sitting alone on a cluster of chairs near the check-in desks, and makes his way over, dropping his bag to one side of a chair. “Can I sit here?”

The Starfleet cadet doesn’t bother to look over his PADD. “Sure.”

Jim sits down opposite, and licks his lips slowly, leaning forwards to prop his elbows on his knees. “You’re a cadet, right?”

The cadet hesitates for a moment, and looks up. “Yeah,” he answers finally. “How did you know?”

Jim grins a little. “You pretty much fail at being discreet. You’re wearing civvies, but you’re still wearing a badge on your collar and the sleeve of your uniform’s stuck out of your duffel. It’s red. It’s pretty hard to miss.” He lets his smile widen. “Besides, all cadets sit like they’ve got a stick up their ass.”

The cadet finishes turning round from doing up his duffle in time to send Jim an appropriately filthy look. “Smart-assed motherfucker,” the cadet grumbles, rolling his eyes. “Why didn’t you go annoy one of the others, anyway?”

Jim glances around at the cadet’s gesture. Scattered through the airbase, the occasional unfortunate cadet or officer is surrounded by passengers pointing at the holoscreens and asking questions in loud voices. “Because of that,” Jim answers, and the cadet smiles a little, returning to his PADD.

“Smart move.”

“So.” Jim shrugs. “Do I need to ask the obvious question?”

“You can if you want, but my answer’s going to be the same as any of the others. I don’t have a clue what’s going on.”

Jim’s smile flickers a little. “Seriously? None at all?”

The cadet shrugs. “No more than the rest of you.” He glances up at Jim. “To be honest, I don’t think anyone knows. Not even Starfleet.”

They slide into silence, and Jim slowly licks his lips. His eyes flicker back up at the ship on the holoscreen. “I don’t like this,” he says softly.

The cadet, after a moment, shuts down his PADD, looks up at Jim and nods. “It doesn’t take a Starfleet badge to work out something’s not right.”

Jim straightens a little and squints up at the feed. On screen, the picture of the ship’s changing, its base shifting until slowly something begins to sink out of the bottom and lower right into the San Franciscan atmosphere. It’s long, barbed and cylindrical, and Jim’s fingers tighten on the arm rest. It has a second to show the flash of orange as something in the cylinder activates, and then every single screen across the airbase clicks out to black. Seconds later, Jim feels the impact tremor hard underneath his ankles as it pushes up to vibrate around his kneecaps.

“What the hell was that?” the cadet barks beside him, after a rather unattractive yell. Jim frowns and closes his eyes, his head thrumming in time with his heartbeat, thinking desperately hard. “California’s over a thousand miles from here,” the cadet muses, voice a little less shaken, and Jim can hear his forehead crumple in concentration. “Whatever they’re doing over there, if we can feel the aftershocks this far away it can’t be good.”

Jim’s eyes snap open and fix on the blank holoscreen. “What’s the chances of all of these screens happening to fail all at once?” A second tremor follows the first, sending a fine shower of concrete dust settling across his shoulders.

The cadet shakes his head. “God knows,” he mutters, shrugging. “A million to one.”

A neat voice asks them all politely over the intercom to leave the airbase with minimal fuss and congregate in the parking lot outside, but Jim’s on his feet and running across to the Communications Office before the message has even finished broadcasting.

With a roll of his eyes, the cadet follows him.

“Can you get me in there?” Jim asks when he caught up, shrugging off a security guard’s hold and riding against the flow of passengers battling their way to the double-door exit.

The cadet hesitates for a second. “I can try.” He scans a badge in front of the computer terminus; the response is a red flash and a decidedly negative beep. “Sorry,” he replies, and shrugs. “I guess I don’t have the clearance.”

Jim swears to himself and turns on his heel, looking out across the steadily-emptying airbase. “We don’t need to clear the building – we need to clear the planet.”

The cadet snorts. “You’ve lost me.”

“That thing, whatever it is, it’s doing serious damage to the planet – you said yourself it must be bad if _we_ can feel it – and those,” he jabs his finger at the nearest holoscreen, “those all failing at once is virtually impossible – communications blackout. Which, I believe, by _your_ regulations, counts as an overtly hostile act.” The cadet’s half-listening, desperately trying to get in touch with _someone_ over his handheld, and Jim can tell from the lines of frustration across his forehead it’s not working. “If even Starfleet’s comms are down, you _have_ to admit that there’s something going on.”

“Are you always this paranoid?” The cadet, looking highly sceptical, shakes his head. “Look, even if there _is_ something happening, Starfleet will be able to sort out some form of defence – it’s hardly worth evacuating the planet for.”

“But – ” The cadet sighs, shakes his head, and begins to walk away, still muttering to his handheld. Jim chases after and grabs his arm, spinning him on the spot. “What about Vulcan? Their planet randomly gets destroyed – ”

“It didn’t _randomly get destroyed_ ,” the cadet interrupts, irritable, “it suffered a natural disaster. Even Starfleet says so.”

“You still think so? With _that_ thing hanging over our head?”

The cadet’s eyes slide to meet Jim’s. “Yeah, but…” He groans, shaking his head. “Jesus, as much as you might actually be on to something, I’m damned if I like it.”

Jim, in frustration, has abandoned him, and is already halfway across the foyer. Another roll of the eyes, and the cadet catches up with him again. He’s grabbed the arm of a passing security officer, much to her disapproval, and she’s protesting loudly, trying to catch the eye of a colleague. “I must ask, _sir_ – ” It’s always amazed him how women can imbue one word with so much sarcasm. “ – that you leave the premises for the safety – ”

“You do interplanetary services from here too, right?”

She hesitates, still trying to free her arm. “Yes,” she replies, glancing at the cadet as he catches up with them. “There are a couple of shuttles in the hangar we use for shuttle runs for cargo and supplies.”

“We need to start getting as many of these people as we can into them, and get them – ”

“You’re fucking crazy,” she laughs, and wrestles against his fingers. By now, almost the whole of the airbase is deserted; the staff are filing out of the front doors, followed by the straggling passengers. A second officer comes up beside them and eyes up Jim’s hand wrapped around his colleague’s arm.

“Is everything alright here?”

“I’m fine,” she mutters, finally getting free from Jim’s fingers and turning away. “How many people are still in the building?”

“A few civilians caught in the bathrooms, half a dozen or so staff. Everyone else has made it out onto the field.” Over her shoulder, he glances Jim up and down, shifting his weight. “We’re advising people to stay calm and try and contact friends and family.”

“It won’t work,” Jim interrupts, pushing between them. “None of our communications devices are, not even Starfleet’s.” He glances at the cadet next to him, and turns back to the female officer. “Listen to me. I’m not crazy. If we stay on this planet, we’re dead.”

The guard, invulnerable to Jim’s exaggerated theatrics, merely looks sceptical. “I’m heading out to the field. Our orders are to sweep the building and congregate outside.” He walks off to the exit, leaving the three of them standing in the middle of the empty foyer. A third shock vibrates up through the floor, and the female officer winces.

“I don’t – ”

Jim puts his hand on her arm. “Where’s the nearest shuttle that’s capable of space travel?” She shakes her head, her mouth opening silently, and he shakes her a little. “Come on, you have to – ”

“Terminal 3-27,” she blurts out. “South wing. We were stacking it for a fuel run – ”

“I need you to round up everyone you can find in the building and get them over there, staff, civilians, anyone. Don’t go out on the field, it’ll just cause chaos – ”

“But – you can’t just – look! This is fucking insane!” She shrugs out of Jim’s grip again and shakes her head.

The cadet takes hold of her arm, softer, calmer. “Look, lady, I don’t like it either, but you have to admit something about this isn’t right.” Jim stares at him in surprise; since when did he switch sides?

“Of _course_ it’s not right, but it’s more than my job’s worth to follow some dumb hick’s crazy plan to _evacuate the planet_.” She sighs, upturns her arm in a dramatic gesture, and then looks slowly between the two of them. “You really believe something’s going down, don’t you?”

The cadet looks suspiciously uneasy.

“Yeah,” Jim replies. “I do.”

She shakes her head, fishes in her pocket and drops a swipecard in Jim’s hand. “Get to the shuttle,” she mutters. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Jim puts his hand on her shoulder for a moment as a thanks, but she shrugs it off and runs across the foyer, another shower of dust falling just as she leaves. “This way,” he announces to the cadet, and sets off at a steady jog.

“Wrong way,” he replies, grabbing his shoulder and steering him around. “The south wing’s on the right.”

Jim looks at him. “I’m heading south.”

“Which’ll lead you to the east wing. The south wing is this way. Look, I’ve been in this building enough times to know the way around, and if you don’t believe me there’s a huge fucking sign above your head telling you that _this_ is the way to the south wing.”

Jim looks up.

“Shut up.”

The shuttle in T3-27 turns out to be nothing more than a cargo ship, bare bones of a craft – they’re lucky to find it equipped with harnesses. Jim notices with slight amusement how his cadet companion pales slightly at the sight of it. “Nervous flier?”

“Fuck you,” he mutters back. He runs up the loading ramp and starts flipping down as many seats as he can find, digging around in the metal casing for seatbelts and harnesses. “I guess twenty seats, maybe twenty-five if we use the bench at the back with a single belt.”

Jim walks on board and glances around. “It’s not pretty.”

“Shuttles rarely are.”

Jim leaves the craft, standing uneasily beside the loading bay. “I’m not used to it,” he confesses as the cadet joins him, perching on an empty canister. “Ordering people around. Being in charge.”

“It’s not something you can get used to.” The cadet hands him a small flask, and he takes a grateful drink. “Call me old-fashioned, but it seems a little odd to take a drink with you when I don’t even know your name.”

Jim’s lips curve up a little. “Jim Kirk.”

“McCoy. Leonard McCoy.” He reaches across and shakes Jim’s hand. “Probably not the best circumstance to meet someone, the end of the world.”

McCoy glances at the door; the female security officer’s entered the Terminal, a trail of confused-looking passengers and staff following behind. Jim smiles awkwardly at them as they file onboard, and the officer walks to stand beside him. “I talked to my superiors and, guess what? They think you’re batshit.” She hesitated for a second. “I, however, God help me, don’t. I brought everyone I could find.” Jim nods absently; his focus is on the door, planning recklessly in his head a way to get everyone else safe, until the officer shoots the door panel with a hand phaser, triggering the security mechanism with a long, loud screech.

“Jesus,” McCoy swears, jumping back. “What did you do that for?”

“We haven’t got time to head back and try and convince people; the field’s at least a five minute journey, even at a sprint, then five minutes back, presuming everyone turns round and believes us at once – which is unlikely.” Jim’s still staring at the door, heart going mental. “We should go,” she adds, finally. “If you really do think something’s up then it’s now or never.” It’s blunt and a little disgusting, and it doesn’t settle right in Jim’s head, but he knows it’s true.

“God help them,” McCoy answers softly, his eyes on the Terminal’s door.

Jim catches the officer’s arm just before she gets inside the shuttle. “What’s your name?”

She raises a single eyebrow. “Cassie.”

“Jim Kirk. Thanks, Cassie.”

Inside the shuttle, McCoy sits down a moment after he does, strapping himself in with the harness. “‘Thanks, Cassie’?” he echoes, shaking his head with a snort. “Talk about bad timing.”

Jim grins. “There’s no such thing as bad timing.”

The shuttle’s engine fires up beneath his feet, and McCoy, to his left, slowly shuts his eyes, his mouth tight and pained. Jim’s head falls back and he shakes with the shuttle as it clears the ground and sails above the airbase. Being the last on board, their seats are slightly isolated from the others’, right next to the door, a porthole on Jim’s right-hand side; he twists his neck to watch the ship’s beam plummeting further down into the planet, and then, with a bright flare of orange, it stops.

At almost exactly the same time, Cassie sticks her head out of the door, catching eyes with him. “We’ve reestablished communication,” she says softly. The shuttle’s not shaking as violently – though McCoy still has his eyes tight shut – so he unclips his harness, entering the cockpit. She flips a switch to her left as he walks in, activating the speakers; the airwaves are full of orders, shouting and confusion. Jim listens for a moment, trying to make sense of the noise, but it’s going too loud and too fast to even pick out a single word. The shuttle itself is being piloted by an officer only a handful of years older than Jim, and between the three of them they hold a shocked silence at the chaotic sounds of the planet below. “Do you know what it’s doing?”

Cassie reaches over and pushes one of the feeds across the screen – it’s haywiring madly, screeching out warnings that make Jim’s ears ring. “This just came through from the head office.”

“Gravitational readings?” Jim realises as he peers closer, and Cassie nods.

“Yeah, we need access to the planet’s patterns, so we can advise the pilots… but it’s not making any sense – that looks like…” She points to a pulsing dot on the screen. “That looks like it’s coming from the centre of the Earth.”

Jim leans over her shoulder. “That’s a singularity.”

“A motherfucking black _hole_ ,” the pilot, to Jim’s right, breathes out, paling considerably.

Jim reaches out his finger and cuts off the comms device.

“We’ve cleared the planet’s atmosphere,” the pilot says, his voice a little shaky. The calculation flashes up on screen, rimmed in a healthy green. “We’re far enough away to be…” Safe. Jim looks out of the viewscreen at the space around them; there’s no sight of any other ship in the sky, other than the one over Earth. They could have gone to warp, though, by now, or left the planet much sooner than they had – they’re not the _only_ ones –

“Jim – Jim, you’ve got to look at this.” McCoy’s voice comes from back inside the main shuttle, and Jim walks over to him, crouching down next to the porthole beside his seat.

The alien ship peels away from the planet. Then, slowly, with deathless accuracy and absolutely no warning at all, the Earth crumples into itself and is gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Jim stares. There’s not even a mark, a smudge across the sky – just a gap in space. There’s a moment where it jars in his head, too much to understand, and there’s a laugh caught in his throat – and then he blinks, and when his eyes refocus the Earth’s still gone.

The shuttle, in its own, quiet little world, is perfectly silent.

The floor under Jim’s knees bucks and writhes momentarily, readjusting to the shift in gravitational matrices around it, and Jim opens his eyes to find his fingers clamped tightly onto the armrest. He stands; only a few eyes flicker in his direction at the movement – most of the passengers are too wrapped up with outside. He locks the door of the cockpit behind him. “Complete radio silence,” the pilot says, eventually. “On every channel. There’s nothing.” Static spills like breaking glass out of the speakers; in front of him, displayed on the viewscreen, the moon rotates forlornly a fraction more, lost without its planet, and slowly begins to drift into nothing.

“I wonder if they felt it,” Cassie says, softly. “I wonder if they felt it at all.”

Jim presses his fingers to his forehead and, just as he closes his eyes, the ship shakes with something much more violent than gravitational displacement. The enemy ship’s turned from the Earth and is promptly firing everything at any noticeable survivors – i.e., a cargo ship stuffed with twenty-odd humans dangling just off their starboard helm.

“They missed us,” the pilot mutters, fingers flicking through status reports. “And I don’t think they meant to. This ship can’t take a hit, it’ll buckle – ”

“You’ve got warp drive on this, right?”

The pilot, bemused at the interruption, glances at Jim again. “Yeah, but only to factor three – ” Another, stronger shake knocks Jim off his feet and from his new viewpoint the alien ship’s grotesquely visible across the viewscreen. “ – We just lost navigation facilities. If we hit warp now I don’t know where – ”

“Do it!”

“It’s not as simple as that, we could end up inside another black hole for all I – ”

A third jolt, and warning lights fly up all across the dashboard, and Jim loses it. “For fuck’s sake, _do it_!”

With a stomach-wrenching tug, the ship pulls itself miserably into warp, and the sky around Earth slides into a blur before jumping into nothing.

 

 

Jim heads straight to sit beside McCoy when he leaves the cockpit. “Everyone wants to know what’s going on,” McCoy says as he sits down. “I only ask because you seem to be the only one who does.” He’s nursing his handheld comms device, which has an ominously empty screen; as McCoy flips it in his fingers, Jim notes a hairline crack splitting its underside, coupled with the reek of sizzling plastic. It must have been busted up when they jumped to warp, which fits pretty well with the luck they’re having at the moment.

“I’ve got no clue,” Jim mutters. “And who died and made me captain anyway?”

Considering the whole planet just blew up, this isn’t a particularly sensitive comment. His mom’s been dead for the best part of two days, and it’s still sliding uneasily in his stomach, reminding him he hasn’t even thought about it yet.

McCoy’s eyebrow slides upwards, but he says nothing.

 

 

The pilot has a face like thunder when Jim reenters the cockpit. Cassie’s sitting on the left, scanning through the files of anything she can put together, her mouth a tight, fixed line. “What’s going on?” His attempts to be amicable only earn a filthy look from the pilot in return. Apparently, it’s his fault again.

“Technical difficulties,” Cassie explains, her voice a tight monotone. “Turns out this was a fuel shuttle headed for Vulcan, and guess where the warp computer’s decided to take us?” With a twist of her fingers she flicks up a map of the outlying region they’re plummeting towards onto the central view screen; a big fat red pulsing blob of nothing emanates around the area formerly occupied by Vulcan. “Our best bet is to land on one of the surrounding planets and try and make contact with Starfleet.” She tucks part of her hair behind her ear and leans painfully across the console to push her finger into the display of one of the neighbouring planets; it inflates until it nearly fills the screen and its details slowly sharpen, little labels flicking up around the edge. Jim doesn’t like the fact most of them are rimmed with an angry red. “This one has a base on the southern hemisphere.”

“Delta Vega,” Jim reads off the largest label. “ _That_ looks hospitable.”

“It gets worse.”

“Oh. It gets _worse_.”

“The landing gear was damaged when we went to warp,” the pilot mutters. “Which, of course, makes my job _so_ much easier.”

“Alex is a natural-born optimist,” Cassie sighs with a roll of her eyes. “It’ll probably turn out to be nothing. Just bumpy.” She hesitates a moment. “I did a head count just before we took off. Twenty-three; fourteen men, six women and three children.”

There’s a hard taste at the back of Jim’s mouth. It’s not much. It’s not much at all. “With or without us?”

“With.”

Jim nods; it’s easier to pretend he understands. “How long before we get to…”

“Delta Vega. Uh, just over an hour. Alex’ll set us down somewhere near the base and a team can go out for supplies and work out what we do next.”

Jim stands a little shakily in front of the cockpit door, addressing the shuttle over the noisy rattle of the engines. “So, uh.” He clears his throat. “Hi. I’m Jim…” He trails off, catches himself and shakes his head. “We’ve found a planet we’re going to camp out on and try and make contact with Starfleet.”

“Has there been any word from our families?” Jim traces the voice to a boy, probably fifteen, sitting near the back. He wonders whether he counts as one of the fourteen men or the three children.

“No, we’ve not heard anything at all.” He glances around a little. “From Starfleet or anyone.”

“That was very brave,” McCoy mutters sardonically as Jim sits down again. “Talking in front of _all_ those people.”

“Fuck you,” Jim murmurs back, and steals his flask.

 

 

Jim had allowed the shuttle to shake him to sleep – it’d been a pretty easy feat; running for over forty-eight hours on juice and adrenaline left his body starved and grateful for the rest it could get. A more abrupt shake wakes him, though, and he sees from his porthole they’ve reached Delta Vega. The whole planet’s swimming with angry white storm clouds, and they can’t see any of the surface underneath. “That looks hospitable,” McCoy murmurs with a little snort.

Jim ignores him and walks into the cockpit. “We’re going to enter the atmosphere pretty soon,” Cassie says as he enters. “Can I get you to do the stewardess thing and check people are buckled up?”

Jim’s on the second corridor of people when a jolt beneath his feet makes him lose his footing and the breath’s kicked out of him, sprawled on his back again. Even from his inconvenient position he can feel the shuttle nosediving beneath his feet, and out of a porthole to his right the planet’s atmosphere fries the outside of the shuttle in hot angry flashes. He can hear the computer’s screeching from the other side of the craft; his feet dangle under him as the shuttle turns perpendicular to the surface and he catches onto a loose strap and clings on with one violently-straining wrist as they fall and slam into the planet.

Whether he blacks out or not is debateable – he remembers listening to the machines’ bleeping slowly calming down, an acrid smell of smashed, singed plastic and a hot, constant white that could be attributed to concussion or the fact they just landed on a planet covered in snow. He lets go of his death-grip on the buckle around his wrist and rolls a few feet, stopping in a pile of snow around the cockpit door. The shuttle’s landed in a snowdrift, leaning heavily towards the right, and the door’s crumpled in, snow spilling inside. It shifts uneasily as Jim stands, and the cockpit door slides open as his weight makes the ship lurch violently towards the right. The acrid smell of dripping petrol makes the urge to throw up build up hard and hot in the back of his throat.

McCoy’s cursing and struggling his way out of his harness to the left of the crumpled door, and Jim looks away as he sticks his head through the door and is violently sick, his stomach lurching in sympathy. Cassie struggles out the cockpit, a dazed Alex in tow, and McCoy casts a scathing look in their direction. “Just bumpy my _ass_ ,” he mutters, and groans a little, his head falling back.

Outside is fucking _freezing_ , but they’ve managed to land somewhere near a cave, and there’s a momentary pause in the hellish weather; from the sky, Jim guesses they’ve got an hour’s gap before another storm hits. McCoy’s finished freeing most of the passengers from their harnesses and is helping them find footing in the slanted shuttle when Jim finishes clearing a path and crawls back inside.

“There’s a cave pretty nearby, but I don’t want to lead everyone off into it to find it’s the lair of some motherfucking big cave monster.” He grins at McCoy and chucks him a torch. “Let’s go _exploring_.”

It isn’t huge inside, but it’s tall enough to stand and it widens out a few hundred feet in. They argue for a while over the fact that there’s only one way in and out – “We’re fucked if there’s a cave in,” McCoy finally declares, “but at least nothing can sneak up on our asses.” – and then McCoy decides it’s inhabitable, though this is probably due to the fact the storm Jim anticipated to arrive in an hour or so actually gets there within a few minutes.

They manage to find something to burn inside the shuttle – it was, after all, meant to be on a fuel run – and the more capable of them battle the storm to scrounge food from the onboard supplies. They don’t talk while they eat, and Jim finishes early to help Cassie go through the stuff found in the shuttle’s emergency hatch. They count out twenty-five sleeping bags, more luck than convenience; the shuttle had just recently been written off commercial use and converted for trade, and an oversight had meant it was still equipped with Federation-standard emergency supplies, including two weeks’ worth of food, sanitized water, hydrocell canisters and rudimentary sleeping equipment. Jim organises them into small groups for sleeping while Cassie eats – it’s largely gender-based, with exceptions for the few families they keep together – and allocates them somewhere to sleep in the cave, which, whilst mostly circular, has a few alcoves and nooks towards the back a little more sheltered from the cold. They burn through one hydrocell before they’re settled for sleep, and Jack, a small, blonde woman with a vaguely British accent offers to take the first watch. Jim takes the second.

He lies with McCoy in the alcove nearest the back, staring at the whorls of the ice-ceiling above him. The sleeping bags aren’t thick enough to completely hide the fact he’s lying on snow, and he’s hardly slept before Jack’s shaking him awake, the words _something different something special_ tumbling in his ears.

He lets his eyes slip out of focus on the fire in front of him, and in the patterns it makes on the wall he can see the Earth dissolving in on itself, over and over, and he closes his eyes. It’s been a dizzying rush, the whole of the day, and there’s finally a little comprehension – which is still disastrously far from understanding – creeping into his head. His mother’s dead, his planet’s gone – Earth! It’s never _Earth_ that’s gone! – and he’s stuck in a cave on an ice planet with what could very well be the largest group of surviving humans from planet Earth.

It’s more than a little terrifying.

There’re soft footprints in the snow, and Jim looks up to see the boy from the shuttle sit down beside him. He’s fourteen, not fifteen as Jim had thought, and he’s called Alex, like the pilot. “I can’t sleep,” he explains in a soft voice. There’s a southern tinge to his accent, though it’s not as strong as McCoy’s.

“Too cold?” Alex shrugs, and Jim nods. Something like that. “I’ll try and make some hammocks or something tomorrow,” he adds. “It’ll be easier to sleep when you’re not on the floor.”

His mind’s caught up with his exhausted body by the time he’s relieved from his shift and he readily collapses into his bag and sleeps without dreaming.

 

 

The whole of his right side’s numb from cold when he wakes, and he has to sit for a moment nursing it, little tingles shooting painfully along his fingers. He’s thrown for a moment as he realises he’s the last one up; a group’s just got back from a trek to the shuttle and have, by the looks of it, pretty much stripped it bare; the younger Alex is sat to the side, working quietly on what looks like a radio; Jack’s in the centre, comforting one of the children, and Cassie is beside her, playing with the two still young enough to be easily entertained. He grabs a water canister, floating near the back of the cave to wash as best as he can.

McCoy walks to stand next to him as he reaches the centre of the cave, pausing to dry by the fire. “We just got back from the shuttle before another damn storm hit. It looks like this planet can’t go five minutes without having a major climactic disaster.”

Jim smiles a little, and then feels his face fall as he sees the meagre pile of supplies they’ve amassed. “We’ve got enough supplies to last us at least a week and a half, maybe more if we’re sparse, but the shuttle’s beyond repair – well, short of a miracle.” He sighs, staring out of the narrow tunnel marking the end of the cave.

“You can’t seriously be considering going out there on _foot_ – that’s suicide!” They’re pretty well-sheltered this far back from the entrance, but Jim can still feel the cold and hear the storm outside. Contrary to popular belief, he’s not stupid.

“Of course not,” Jim replies, his eyes a little glassy. “That would be suicide.” He breaks off from McCoy and walks to the pile of stuff salvaged from the shuttle; the pilot comes to stand next to him. “I was thinking of building hammocks into the walls or something – we might all sleep a bit better with our asses off the ground.”

Alex shrugs. “Makes sense. There were some tarps lining the emergency hatch; if you cut those up you should have enough to go around.”

Jim sorts through the materials and derives a standard template for the sheets of tarpaulin to make a useable hammock; he shows it to the few other men hanging around looking to help, and then sits with a knife and his strip of tarp and sets about cutting it into a suitable shape. McCoy, with a little bit of comical reluctance, makes his way over and sits beside Jim with a huff.

“You don’t seem to be having any problems being in charge now,” he mutters as he picks up his own piece and starts cutting.

“Yeah, well,” Jim smiles. “Must be innate or something.” A sheaf of his strip falls and he watches it settle with a wet-sounding whack onto the snow. “You never mentioned; you’re a cadet, right? What’s your focus?”

A second of silence patters by. “Xenobiology. Well, medicine.” McCoy shifts a little uneasily, and when he glances over at Jim he realises it can’t entirely be due to numbness. “I’ve not been completely honest with you.” Jim raises an eyebrow. “I’m on suspended leave… I’d been staying with some friends in the South, and I was in Cooperstown because I was heading to San Fran for a tribunal, after…” He shifts again. “A kid died on my table, and I…” The dread of those significant pauses, the uneasy gazes that accompany them, and Jim’s reached the conclusion before McCoy gets round to saying it. “… I wasn’t entirely with myself.”

Jim nods, almost to himself. “You were drunk.”

“Yeah.”

“Wow.”

Jim punches a hole through the tarp and threads part of the metal pole through it before setting about chiselling the end into a point. McCoy, beside him, diligently continues to strip down his piece of tarpaulin, and Jim watches the vacant concentration in his face. Bad things happen to good people – it’s a phrase Jim’s familiar with, and one his mother was so fond of repeating.

He loses focus for a moment. _Mother was_. It’s hard to get used to that.

He looks up once at McCoy, but says nothing. He finishes the first hammock silently, a little later than the others, and strings it up as his own at the back of his cave. It takes them a large part of the morning and most of the afternoon to make twenty-three, and Jim’s glad for the occupation.

 

 

The best part of the week slides by with little occurrence; on the second day, Alex gets the radio working, and on the third Jim helps him fix it into one of Starfleet’s long-range waves, able to receive, but not transmit.

From what they can hear, there’s been no other catastrophe since the destruction of Earth. The mysterious ship’s often reported appearing suddenly on the fringes of space and despite the terror of the adjacent planets disappearing just as rapidly. To Jim, it sounds like it’s looking for something, but even the greatest minds of Starfleet can’t seem to work that much out.

There’s only one complete mother-father-sister-brother ensemble in their group and, even then, it’s pretty obvious the whole of their family wasn’t in the shuttle. Earth was destroyed on Tuesday; by Friday the survival figures are circulating and they’re barely scraping the thousands.

 

 

“I guess I count as one of the lucky ones,” McCoy says conversationally over dinner. Jim takes a drink of water, catches a drop with the back of his hand and refocuses his attention. “My family were off planet; my wife decided to take Joanna – my daughter – on holiday.” He snorts for a moment, body tensing with irritation. “I _say_ family – I _say_ wife,” he adds, and it’s all Jim needs to know. Then, he softens slightly, his shoulders slackening. “Of course, everyone else was long gone by then.” He shrugs and – Jim knows it must be a special occasion – finishes the final lick of alcohol from the bottom of his silver flask.

“My family was off-planet too,” Jim says, absently, and finishes his food, folding the packaging in on itself. “My mom was on Vulcan.”

He starts when the first sound McCoy makes is a small snort of laughter; then, after a moment, he lets a smile flick across his face. Of course, the irony of this hasn’t previously escaped him, but McCoy’s laughter – genuine, sympathetic and not in any way mocking – helps. A lot.

 

 

It comes to Jim’s attention pretty early on that McCoy, like any male thirty-plus bitter divorcee, likes to grumble, often quite frequently, and often about nothing very important at all. It keeps him good-humoured, and likewise keeps Jim’s mind cheerfully occupied thinking of new things McCoy can blame his wife for – because, naturally, nothing is _his_ fault.

They’re burrowed in the furthest nook of the cave, McCoy diligently trying to repair the laser scalpel from the medkit, and Jim chucking and catching a roll of elastic bandage just for the sake of having something to do with his hands. “The thing that happened,” Jim begins ambiguously, “the thing that got you suspended.” McCoy’s hands don’t falter, but Jim sees his eyebrow twitch. “Was that your wife’s fault?”

(McCoy thinks about it, about the telephone-argument that inevitably led to him drinking, the unexpected page in the bar, the cab he nearly overturned in his rush to get to the hospital. He can’t even remember what they’d been arguing over; though, in retrospect, this happened more often than not, after the divorce.)

“Kinda,” McCoy replies. “Sorta.”

 _Bad things happen to good people, Jim_. And Jim knows as well as anyone that it’s not the alcohol that’s to blame.

 

 

The following morning McCoy shakes Jim awake, and there’s a haggard concern on his face. It turns out one of the children is missing – two of them are related and travelling with their parents, but the third’s on his own and old enough to realise he’s probably orphaned but still too young to accept it. They’d been looking for him for the best part of an hour; it would seem pretty hard to hide in a circular cave, but they’ve swept it three times already and not found any sign of him. Jim glances to the cave’s entrance and McCoy reluctantly echoes the movement; it’s the most logical conclusion, but not one it’s easy to consider. They both know that if he’s gone out there alone he’s probably dead already.

Jim checks their supplies on his way across the cave; little things are missing, here and there, all of them useful and pointing at a pre-planned expedition across a snowy planet. Jim frowns, running his fingers along the ridge of a discarded plastic sheet. On a whim he flips open the medkit; McCoy stands beside him, looking over his shoulder. “Did you finish fixing that scalpel?” Jim asks, and McCoy nods.

“I put it back there last night, just before we went to bed – Jim!” Jim’s in a steady jog across the cave towards the kid’s hammock, and McCoy rolls his eyes, following him. “There’s no point checking here,” he mutters when he catches up. “Where d’you think we looked first?”

Jim ignores him, already wrestling with his own knots and pulling down the hammock. Revealed behind it, cut out of the wall is a jaggedly rectangular block with a rougher hole bored in the centre; Jim kicks at it and it slides out with a smooth glide, revealing, a few metres’ crawl away, another cave.

“Fuck me,” McCoy breathes, shaking his head.

Jim spends a moment widening the tunnel and climbs through himself; he has to stoop a little in the cave the other side but it’s easy enough going, and, once McCoy climbs through it only takes them a ten-minute shuffle to catch up with the kid, who has usefully got himself stuck in a pit. Jim lets a rope down to help him out and they escort him back to the others.

“What’s your name?” McCoy asks in a somewhat bland tone.

The kid’s silent for a moment. “Timothy,” he replies. His voice is oddly clipped; it takes Jim to realise it’s because his accent is quaintly schoolboy English. He madly wonders for a moment whether Timothy’s related to Jack, and then realises the ridiculousness of the idea that just because the two of them come from the same country means they’re long-lost cousins or something. “And don’t say _anything_. I already know it’s abysmal.”

“It could be worse,” Jim murmurs. “It could be Tiberius.”

Timothy snorts. “There is no way _that’s_ a real name.”

Jim pulls the block back into its place after they climb through – easier said than done, as he ends up having to thread a knot through and make a weird sort of pulley system – and gives the wall above it a blast with a half-empty hydrocell canister. A fresh sheet of ice drops down over it, cutting off the entrance, and Timothy surveys Jim’s work with more than a little disdain before walking off into the centre of the cave, dragging his custom-made bag behind him.

“How the fuck did you know where to look?” McCoy asks when he’s far away enough from the children, giving Jim an incredulous stare.

Jim shrugs. “My guess is he chiselled the hole for the sake of it, found there was a tunnel next to the cave and made up an escape plan.” He grins. “You just gotta think like a kid. I realise it’s easier for some more than others…” He laughs as he gets a smack on the arm for his efforts. “Hey, it’s not my fault I’m not a bag of dry bones held together only by hot air.”

“I’m not even that much older than you,” McCoy grumbles, and marches off across the cave.

Jim smiles as he watches him tramp away, and there’s an oddly-familiar word behind his eyes.

_Bones._

 

 

It sticks.

 

 

“He had a point, though,” Jim murmurs, a handful of days later, and Bones gives him a scathing look.

Surprisingly enough, he hasn’t much taken to his nickname.

Surprisingly enough, this hasn’t stopped Jim.

“Timothy, I mean,” he elaborates. “We’re pushing the week-and-a-half edge of our supplies, and with no way of contacting Starfleet to get us out of here and no way of them finding us – ”

“You’re still suggesting we try and hike it out on foot?” Bones snorts. “No way, Jim. We’d die long before we got anywhere near the base.”

 _We_ gives him a strange surge of hope. “I bet I could convince the others.”

Another snort. “I bet you could, too.” He shakes his head. “Had much experience hiking across snow?”

Jim ignores him.


	3. Chapter 3

Jim wakes up, and he’s hungry. It’s the common situation, more often than not; two weeks in, and their supplies are all but dissolved. Their battered radio hasn’t picked up any word from Starfleet; in short, clipped tones the destruction of a third planet, Tyrellia, was reported halfway through the second week. Other than that, it’s been complete radio silence.

Starfleet has no idea they’re here. And time is running out.

They gather together in the middle around the fire, just as Jim starts eating a little breakfast. “Okay,” Bones says, finally. “We’re going to have to do _something_.”

“The only thing we can do is go out to the Starfleet base on foot,” Jack points out. She looks tired; Bones told him in an undertone the previous night she’s lost a fiancée and is starting to panic she’s pregnant. “And we know that’s just not going to happen.”

“Do we know how far it is to the base?” Jim asks. He looks at Cassie; Cassie looks at Alex.

“I know its coordinates,” Alex says, slowly, “and I’ve got a vague idea of ours. I’d guess it’s probably…” he trails off. “Not officially, okay? _Probably_ forty, fifty kilometres away.”

Jim thinks. He’s covered the same on foot in two or three days before, but that’s been on familiar territory, and the continual snowstorm on the planet’s surface makes it probably about as far from resembling familiar territory as possible. He could fashion a snow-sled out of his hammock and pull the supplies behind him, but it’d be dangerous, and he’s not sure he likes how risky it’d be.

“It’s not a great set of options,” Jim murmurs, slowly. “Starve in here or freeze out there.”

“I can ration the supplies further.” The responsibility so far had been delegated to the mother of the two children, Eva; Jim hasn’t spoken to her, but Bones seems to think she’s capable enough. “It’ll give us maybe another three, four days, but we’ll be hungry,” she continues. “Even more so if I need to split them with a convoy that’s heading out.”

There’s only one among them that’s not American (or, in a couple of cases, at least English) – from what they can gather, he speaks only French, and only in a way that a native could. He starts to speak, rapidly, addressing it to the fourteen-year-old Alex sat beside him, who had attended the sort of private school where French was solidly on the curriculum. They wait for him to finish, and Alex turns to translate.

“He says you’re missing the point,” he begins. “Staying here won’t amount to anything other than us starving to death, and the radio’s never going to work. Besides, it looks like Starfleet’s maintaining radio silence until they figure out what’s going on. The only option we _have_ is to try and make it to the base on foot.” They take this in in silence; Bones is stubbornly trying to avoid Jim’s eye. “He also says that he grew up in the Alps, and knows more than enough about walking through this kind of weather, which is as close to a volunteer as we’ve got so far.”

They don’t come to a decision and argue a lot; they disperse, Jim tagging with Bones to sit in his hammock near the back of the cave. The Frenchman, who can only master about enough Standard to introduce himself as Sébastian, isn’t an option for the convoy, despite his knowledge of the terrain, purely because of his absolute lack of comprehensible language; they can’t risk the chance of someone at the base being able to understand him, and the only one who could act as an interpreter is a fourteen year old kid, who by his own admission would be useless the second they stepped out of the cave. The more dangerous Cassie makes it sound, the more and more Jim begins to itch to go.

“Would you come with me?” he asks Bones softly, swinging himself gently in his hammock. “If I went out there.”

Bones is quiet for a long while. “Yeah,” he replies eventually. “God help me, I think I would.”

They meet again mid-afternoon, most of them still looking grumpy and holding grudges with most of the others. “I’ll go,” Jim begins to a circle of shocked faces.

“Do you know _anything_ about walking in this kind of environment?” Cassie asks, incredulously, and Jim shrugs.

“I went to Alaska for Christmas each year,” he lies, easily. “I think I’m covered.” He carefully avoids Bones’ eye.

“You could have mentioned that earlier,” Bones says, slowly, ringing with disbelief and scorn, and Jim struggles harder not to look his way.

“Okay,” Cassie shrugs, “I guess we’re sorted, then. You can head out in the morning.”

“That was the biggest pile of bullshit you’ve managed so far,” Bones hisses once they’re safely out of earshot, and Jim gives him a dirty look.

“I’d like to see _you_ think of another option.”

Bones scowls, but he says nothing.

Jim has an awkward evening; the others are looking at him with hushed reverence like he’s a dead man walking, mixed with a hell of a lot of hope. He thinks back to when he first took charge in the airport in North Dakota; there’s a similar uneasy worm eating on his insides again. Bones resolutely ignores him, infuriated, and Jim spends most of the evening sat to one side of the fire, staring at his feet and wondering how the hell he’s going to pull this one off.

Bones still has to sleep next to him – moving his hammock and sleeping bag would be both difficult and a bit of a giveaway of Jim’s ineptitude – so Jim waits till he sees him slouching off to bed, rushes over and jumps inside his own hammock. It takes him a while to gather the courage to ask; “You’re still coming with me, right?”

Bones never replies. Jim doesn’t hear he slow, steady breathing that would indicate he’s fallen asleep, either.

 

 

He’s up before pretty much all of the others, other than the younger Alex, who has a touch of insomnia about him and is a familiar sight during the night, and Timothy, whose nightmares (generally, from what Jim gathered, about his parents) were steadily getting worse. They help him strip a spare sleeping bag – the shuttle had had twenty-five and they only number twenty-three – and, though rather optimistically, Jim shapes them into two awkward, puffy jackets that’ll help with the cold a hell of a lot better than what he’s currently wearing. They’ve been lucky enough to find in the shuttle enough supplies to keep them going; the right gear for battling through storms on a snow-covered planet is completely out of the question. He quietly dismantles his hammock, fashions the tarp into a sled, ties on a broken cable to make a strap he can use to drag it along and starts loading it with the food Eva dished out for him last night, as well as water and his sleeping bag. He glances at Bones, dithers for a moment and then shoves his share of supplies on as well, just in case. All in all, it takes them the best part of a couple of hours, and by the time they’re finished people are stirring around him, avoiding Jim’s eye and giving him a wide berth.

“That was a load of crap last night about Alaska, wasn’t it?” Alex asks in a quiet voice as he helps Jim struggle into his custom-made coat. In the corner of the cave, Jim spots Bones stirring and looks away, nodding once at Alex. “You idiot,” he sighs, and shakes his head.

“Yeah, well, no one else was going to offer, were they?”

“Do you do this often?” Alex asks, tightening a strap around his arm in a way that makes Jim yelp. “Make a total ass of yourself.”

“Less than you’d think,” Jim replies, rubbing his eyes.

Alex presses something cold and round into his hand; Jim looks down and tries to figure out what the hell it is. It looks like the end of a ration-pack tin, and through the centre a metal rod’s stamped through; coming off the rod is another strip of metal that points out of the mouth of the cave, and though it wobbles when Jim shakes it, it still resolutely points in the same direction. “It’s a compass,” Alex explains, and steps back from Jim to scan his work. “They taught us how to make them in shop. I guessed it’d come in handy.”

“Thanks,” Jim says softly, and folds it away in his pocket.

Bones is standing beside him, his eyes roving over his ridiculous puffy jacket, and Jim stares him down. “What the _hell_ are you wearing?”

“I made another one,” Jim abruptly replies. “Are you coming?”

Bones hesitates, staring at the messy pile of reconstructed sleeping bag Jim’s painstakingly assembled into a jacket. Cassie, Jack and a few of the others wander over, eyes moving across his custom-made snow gear. In the corner of his eye, Jim, with a lurch of his stomach, sees Sébastian looking incredibly sceptical. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” Jim replies, and begins dragging his sled across to the cave. It slides easily over the compact snow, just as Jim designed it to, and he gets a little thrill at the fact that at least part of his plan is working out.

“Alex went back over to the shuttle – he reckons the base is due south-east from here, and I worked out if you follow the sun you’re headed directly north, so – ”

“It’s okay,” Jim smiles, glancing at the younger Alex by his side and patting his pocket. “I got it covered.”

“Okay,” Cassie shrugs, and waves out of the tunnel. “Good luck, I guess.”

Jim’s staring across the cave at Bones; he’s kept his eyes fixed on the pile of desiccated sleeping bag at his feet. “Give me three days,” he tells Cassie, his eyes on Bones. “Then I guess I’m fucked.”

“And so are we,” Alex points out, drily. There’s that worm back in Jim’s stomach again.

Jim jumps when, across the cave, Bones lets out a mighty curse and attacks the jacket at his feet, attempting to pull it on. Alex rushes over to help and, giving Jim a quick, dizzying surge of hope Bones comes to join him standing in the tunnel, casting him a very awful look. “I doubt I’ll ever forgive you for this,” he growls, turning to glare malevolently out of the entrance.

Once they’re out of the cave, it disappears beneath a snowstorm within a matter of a few steps. Jim gets a sudden, awful lurch in his stomach; how the hell are they ever going to find it again? Bones tugs him on the arm and, slowly, they start trudging on again. There’s nothing to measure time against; they’re in the centre of one of the planet’s vicious storms, obscuring everything in all directions and making it impossible to see beyond Bones’ back, leading him onwards, and almost as hard to hear even his own breathing. They nearly fall over the shuttle when they come across it; the furthest anyone has managed to come out of their miserable little group of refugees so far. They pause the other side, using the shelter for Jim to pull out the compass and peer through the blizzard to determine which way is south-east.

Then, for hours and hours, it’s just trudging.

It’s almost impossible to tell, out of the safety of their cave and lacking a chronometer, how long they march for, or even when night falls; the snow’s so thick they can’t see any sun setting, or any moon rising. Come to think of it, Jim’s not sure he’s even seen blue sky as long as he’s been here, but he supposes there must be a sun somewhere nearby or they’d have frozen to death by now.

Jim realises they’re not far from it as they settle inside another handy but considerably smaller cave to sleep through the night. Jim’s losing feeling in his fingers, but he daren’t trouble Bones about it; he still has a face like thunder and the temperament to match. He improves a little once he’s eaten some rations and Jim’s managed to get a fire going, and they huddle round it as Jim scans the walls of the cave, deciding where best it’d be to set out their sleeping bags. “It’s weird,” Jim says, just to break the silence, “how this planet’s right by Vulcan. I mean, what with Vulcan being so hot and this being so fucking cold.”

He mentally corrects himself on the use of the present tense, feels slightly queasy, and drops his head to look at the floor. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Bones smiling, but he doesn’t get a reply.

 

 

The storm lasts throughout the night and is still going in the morning when they wake up; they eat a little, put out the fire and then they’re back to putting one foot in front of the other.

Unlike the day before, it’s easier going; Bones is dragging their stuff, which might be the reason, but as they’re walking along the storm begins to peter off and, eventually, it stops, leaving them standing on a sunlit, bright white, icy plain. Jim turns to look back the way they came; it’s set slightly in a valley – Jim’s legs, which have been climbing a steady rise for some time, could have told him as much anyway – and thickly surrounded by storm clouds. Trust his luck for them to crash-land in some kind of freaky storm-basin.

The climate they’re walking through changes dramatically when the sun peeks out of the clouds. Whenever it hits them, it’s scorching hot, and the big, heavy, insular jackets they’re wearing are almost unbearable. As soon as it slides behind a cloud again the temperature plummets, and they’re hugging the jackets to them, grateful for the warmth. They make it to the horizon line three times; the fourth time, they stop to eat some food, saying little.

They set off again and walk only a few steps before Bones grabs Jim’s arm sharply; Jim spins to look at him, a little irritated, but then there’s an ominous creaking snap under his feet and he freezes, heart hammering madly. Beneath him he can feel layers of ice separating and sliding apart, and he stumbles backwards just in time to see from safe, solid ground a huge crack render through the floor, spreading two, three, four hundred feet in front of him. He lets out a long, low whistle, and Bones smacks him round the head.

They pick along the side of the ice, trying every now and then to find a safer point to cross. It costs them a lot of time; with the sun now in their sights they can track its movement, and it moves from behind them over their heads until it starts to glitter off the ice in front of them, making Jim squint. The ice stunt earlier means Bones is resolutely ignoring him; with nothing better to do while they’re walking, Jim spends the time thinking. It’s easiest to think about Delta Vega – not Vulcan, Earth, Tyrellia – and so he turns his attention to the surroundings. Have they, he wonders, just landed during Delta Vega’s winter? It’s unlikely; from space, the whole planet was covered with clouds, and winters would probably only affect half of it, presuming it had a climate similar to how Earth’s used to be. Maybe they’ve crash-landed in the middle of an ice age, and Delta Vega’s just a few hundred million years behind Earth; he wonders, if they died out here, whether in seventy-million years time they’d be dug up and put on display in some museum, like the dinosaur bones and Neanderthals he remembers visiting on countless school trips when he was little.

Or, maybe they’ve just landed on a freaking ice planet.

Jim shakes his head. He thinks too much.

He walks through his local museum in his six-year-old mind’s eye, marvelling up at the size of the tusks on the stuffed, plastic woolly mammoth rearing angrily above him. Of course, most of the stuff there had only been replicas; anything of any cultural value had long been sent off planet to Starbase 52, acting as a planet-cum-library, safely out of reach from terrorist attacks, art thieves or random terrestrial implosions.

The real reason for their transportation was actually a little bit more pathetic; advances in technology brought about a predictable outcome – namely, incredible laziness. At first, people stopped going to visit anything at all – why would they, when a holo-computer in their living rooms would take them there instantly without ever having to exit the front door? – but then there had been a series of nasty seizures, unexplained cases of brain aneurysms and, most importantly, rocketing power bills. So, people started travelling around again – only to find, to their horror, that this actually cost quite a lot of money. Ignoring the standard supply-demand pattern, the travel companies escalated their prices phenomenally, and there was widespread outrage. Eventually, financial problems and ever-growing laziness led to the creation of 52, a place entirely devoted to storing the documents and iconic monuments of planet Earth. Imagine; so much culture, all in one place – a tourist’s wet dream. He wonders whether anything’s gone down with Earth; there were rumours about parts of the Eiffel Tower still being real, and somewhere, deep below ground level in New York, there were myths that the Empire State Building might have survived. Jim generally dismissed them, but it’s… a thought. A possibility, albeit not a very pleasant one, but somehow grimly preferable to the warehoused ancient monuments on Starbase 52.

He opens his mouth to casually quiz Bones on the concept, but his voice dies in his throat. There’s an indistinct figure hurtling towards them from across the plain; it’s moving at bullet-speed but still too far away to be fully recognisable, especially with the setting sun blazing orange and sending skittering flares rebounding across the sheets of ice. He stops dead, thinking of how the cracking ice under his feet means there’s _water_ here, and water means, generally, that carbon-based life can exist, and then there’s a picture in his head of the stuffed woolly mammoth lurching alive and trying to gore him with his plastic tusks outside a snow-covered chalet that looks suspiciously like something off the front of a Christmas card.

Bones bumps into him and swears, loudly. “What the hell’s the matter with you now?” he barks, and Jim points.

They’re in the middle of a wide, open plain, with the sun beaming down on them, and no feasible place to hide, and there’s something charging straight at them and it’s on all fours. Bones freezes, his mouth falling open, but by the time they even will movement back into their legs it’s in front of them, next to them, and it’s behind them.

Jim breathes out a heavy sigh of relief, the knot in his stomach vanishing. Bones is still staring after it, so Jim’s the only one who turns round to realise, with mounting horror, that the _thing_ had been running from _something else_.

With a terrified yell, he breaks off in a sprint after the creature in front of them, Bones staring at him in disbelief. Jim just keeps running – then, with a lurch of shock, he realises that Bones is still attached to the sled with all their supplies. He skids to a halt, turns on his heel and pelts back towards him, meeting Bones huffing halfway and helps him drag the sled along behind them.

When he stops to help Bones, he catches a glimpse of the thing chasing them. It’s red, which is his first impression; a vivid, plastic red, with bruised-apple coloured bumps. It’s got a mouth bigger than its face, and eyes everywhere they shouldn’t be, but most importantly it has long, sharp legs that are _perfect_ for gliding across the icy snow.

The first of its legs punctures a hole in the sled behind them, ripping a clean groove through it, but the two of them keep frantically running on. The snow’s getting sludgy under Jim’s feet, harder and harder to run on, slipping from under him like sand, and then the leg splats through the sled again and sends it flying, wrenched backwards out of Jim’s fingers. Bones’ grip is made of stronger stuff and he gets dragged back with it; a long, black tongue shoots out and wraps around his leg, and Jim spins, grabbing a knife off the sled and leaping across the sled from the left, driving it hard into the tongue. The thing screeches, ringing painfully in their ears, but it _lets Bones go_ and then it rounds on Jim, tossing him onto the floor with one leg and attempting viciously to spear him with another. Jim dodges three, four, but on the fifth the thing gets lucky and its leg shears straight into his stomach.

Jim’s world explodes into pain, ricocheting from his middle all across his body till even the tips of his toes are throbbing with it. He can smell the blood before he feels it sopping his clothes, and he dizzily hears the thing screech again, and there’s definitely a victorious note behind it. Then, in a flash of hot orange, Bones has jumped in front of him, brandishing a hydrocell canister as a flamethrower and the creature rears off him. The wave of pain that follows the creature’s removal of its leg rockets beyond Jim’s threshold and his world slams into black.

 

 

(McCoy watches the thing, still shrieking loudly, wobble rapidly away with a happy thrill of satisfaction. Then, he turns on his heel, and sees Jim, his eyes firmly shut and more than a little blood staining the snow with dark streaks; his face blanches almost as violently as Jim’s. He stumbles beside him for a second, his hands dithering to find where best to help Jim’s body, but as he straightens he realises there’s a slight snow settling around them and he has to get them out of there; he starts shoving all the things on the sled to one side, making room for him. He knows he should go out and find somewhere first, but leaving Jim here would be advertising a fresh banquet, especially with so much of his blood already all over the snow. Jim lets out an unconscious yelp of pain as McCoy drags him on, and then he hooks the straps over his shoulder and starts to walk.

The falling snow takes him back to the timeless limbo they’d been in when they first left the cave; he drags Jim onwards with no idea if he’s going to reach shelter soon, if he’s even going in the right direction or whether Jim’s already bled to death behind him. He swears softly under his breath; he really should have attempted to bandage him up before he moved him.

By divine intervention or sheer, blind, miraculous good luck he stumbles upon what can hardly be called a cave – it’s closer to an overhang – but there’s enough space for Jim, himself and the sled to get out of the snow, and for a fire to be protected from the storm; he’s not looking for much more. He strips open Jim’s jacket and pales a little at how much blood’s gone; there’s still a pulse, definitely there, surging more blood out of Jim by the heartbeat. It’s a pretty clean-edged wound, and it’s, again by some fantastic fortune, done more damage to muscle than organ. There’s a dermal regenerator and a packet of blood-replicator in the medkit McCoy brought, but otherwise, he’s on his own.

By the time he’s finished, Jim’s stopped bleeding – or, at least on the outside, and there’s no sign on the skin of anything underneath – and there’s a little flush in his cheeks. McCoy, in contrast, is shaking, still covered in blood and almost as white as the snow around him. He resists the urge to break down hysterically by sternly reminding himself it’s not going to do anyone any good. He stills his hands long enough to rip open a food pack, mashes it up and force-feeds Jim carefully, eats a little himself and sets the fire higher, wrapping his sleeping bag around him and sliding Jim into his.

Needless to say, he doesn’t sleep.)

 

 

In the morning, Jim still feels alive, and he can tell as much because of the fact every inch of him is hurting like hell. Bones looks frantically relieved to see him conscious, then shouts at him for doing anything other than resting while Jim messily attempts to feed himself from a ration pack.

“I fixed you up as good as I could, considering,” Bones mutters darkly, chucking a can of water at him, “but there’s no way you’re strong enough to stand.”

It’s the morning of the second day, and Jim realises with the sharp, angry sting of defeat that there’s no way they’ll make it to the base. “We’ll have to double back,” he croaks, earning himself a filthy look for trying to speak.

“I figured that much out myself,” Bones mutters, shaking his head. “And you’re in no fit state to go trekking anywhere.” He eyes up the sled. “I guess I’ll have to drag you.”

Jim protests loudly until, with the help of Bones hitting him with something rather heavy, he realises resentfully it really is their only option. He grumbles and bitches as Bones drags him back onto the sled, gets a couple of smacks across the head for his effort and eventually settles still as Bones hitches the straps over his back and sets off again.

 

 

(Jim begrudgingly handed over the compass the day before; McCoy stares at it now, trying to work out which way to go. He seems to remember coming from the left before and, sure enough, not long after he sets off back that way he’s out on the sprawling plain again. He flips out the compass, finds north-west and staggers off.

He realises how suspiciously quiet Jim’s being and looks over his shoulder; he’s flat out, and McCoy knows that the painkiller he administered last night would be wearing off by now, and he lets Jim take the pain with unconsciousness. It’s not like he’s got any more to administer – not till they get back to the others, in any rate.

With some idea of where he’s going, coupled with the fact he covered way more ground than he expected last night, he makes good time, and the storm-filled sky ahead gets closer and closer, and when he stops for lunch he’s nearly descending back into the basin where they’d crash-landed.

As he’s eating, there’s a bright, searing flash in the sky above, a long trail of smoke and something slams down into the ground, close enough to shake it violently under his feet. He keeps his eye on where it landed, waiting for something to happen, and when nothing does he frowns, scrunches up his food pack and drops it on the sled, standing up. With a glance at Jim – even the impact hasn’t managed to wake him up – and another furtive one around to check nothing’s nearby, he picks his way across the four-five hundred feet between him and whatever landed.

It’s burrowed itself a few feet down in the snow, and the ice around it is still melting, hissing loudly. It’s probably six or seven feet long and metallic silver; it looks to all the world like a pod from a Federation Starship. McCoy stares at it, eyebrow raised in mild shock, and as he does the door flops open with a clunk. There’s a _kid_ inside – McCoy wonders for a moment for his sanity – dressed in a yellow Federation uniform, and he’s completely unconscious. With difficulty, McCoy manages to drag the kid out onto the snow and then across to where Jim’s lying; he wraps the kid in his own sleeping bag and then heads back over to the pod, jumping the few feet and landing with a crash in the centre of the pod.

On board, the warp computer’s going insane – to be honest, McCoy’s surprised to see one – it’s clearly been pushed too far, too hard, and just when it’s shrieking so loud it’s breaking his eardrums it splutters once more miserably and dies. Around him, all the lights on the console flash once and go out. “Well, this thing’s fucked to hell,” he announces to the empty shuttle, and it splutters again, as if in agreement. He rummages around in the shuttle, finds a duffel bag, stuffs the few rations and supplies he can find inside – including, he notices, pleased, a slightly better medkit – and then climbs back out, jogging over to the sled, the kid and Jim. His entourage is starting to sound more and more like the title of a crazy children’s book.

He stuffs all of their supplies in the duffel, dumps it on top of Jim and fits the kid and Jim side-by-side across the tarp. Then, picking up the strap on the sled, he wearily starts dragging it back towards the storm.)

 

 

Jim wakes with a start, and he’s relieved to see that the movement doesn’t cause him the agony it had before. He pokes his stomach tentatively, gets an odd numb sensation for his trouble, and then Bones is beside him, smacking his hand away and giving him a customary filthy look. He looks terrible; the lines on his face seem to have lengthened a decade’s worth since he last saw him, and there are huge bags under his eyes.

“You look terrible,” Jim tells him.

Bones glares. “Gee, thanks. Look, I patched you up again with the better medkit – you should be okay to walk, but try and do anything else and so _help_ me I’ll stab a hypospray in your neck faster than you can say _tranquiliser_.”

Jim gets to his feet and looks around. They’re back in the cave with the others, who’re all avoiding them, looking downcast; Cassie spots the movement out of the corner of her eye, smiles and waves across at him. The younger Alex does the same; well, at least there are two people here who don’t totally hate him. “Where did you get a better medkit anyway?”

Bones explains, quickly, about the pod he found, and the kid inside. Jim wants to speak to him straight away; Bones shoots him down, reminding him the kid’s unconscious anyway and needs his rest. Jim lurches off across the cave unsteadily, Bones at his side with a hand discreetly pressed against his back to stop him falling over, and the touch somehow disorientates and grounds him more than the remnant anaesthetic. He finds he feels better as soon as he’s eaten, and starts anticipating a hurried meeting to work out what they’re going to do next; it never comes. He realises with a queasy wrench that there is no _next_. Jim’s fucked up the last chance they had.

Bones quickly works out that as soon as the kid wakes up he’s going to be a celebrity; he keeps close at hand to the hammock he’s been dumped in, and, once he does wake, keeps everyone else at bay. Bones comes over to where they’re sat round the fire, sitting next to Jim. “He’s going to come talk to us when he’s finished eating, from what I could make out. And no one,” he adds, looking rather savage, “is going to disturb him until he does.” Jim can see why Bones makes such a good doctor.

Maybe ten, fifteen minutes later the kid comes and sits by the fire, looking immensely grateful for the warmth. It’s obvious from the moment he starts speaking why Bones had said _from what I could make out_ ; his voice, heavily accented, takes a moment to get used to. “What’s your name?” Cassie asks, sticking with the basics. Now that the kid’s sat next to the younger Alex, it’s obvious he’s not as young as Jim first guessed; maybe sixteen, seventeen?

“Ensign Chekov,” the kid replies, almost like an automated message, “Pavel Andreievich.” He’s staring into the fire, looking a little lost; beside him, Bones nods to himself, looking self-satisfied, and Jim figures he must have worked out his rank by himself.

“You’re Starfleet, then,” Cassie goes on, looking excited.

“What? Yes,” he replies, a little absently.

“Well?” Alex says, suddenly, and Chekov looks up, confused. “What the hell’s going on out there?!”

“Oh,” he says, glancing around. “How long have you been here?”

“Two weeks,” Jim replies in a murmur. It’s spelt out on all their faces; two long weeks. “Since Earth was destroyed.”

No one’s really voiced it since they arrived; the words are heavy and clumsy on his tongue, and seem to drop like tombstones, going against the warmth of the fire. “Well,” Chekov starts, “Tyrellia was destroyed earlier this week – ”

“Yeah, we know about _that_ , we picked it up on the radio,” Jack interrupts, earning herself a furious glare from Bones, “but do they have any idea who’s doing it?”

Chekov glances around again; his eyes catch on Bones, standing out from the rest of them in his smart red uniform. Jim’s shirt had been ripped to pieces by in the attack, and Bones had substituted his own – as for the trousers, he’d torn a huge hole in the left knee sliding down an icy cliff, which made them impossible to wear, considering the climate. He’d ended up trekking to the shuttle to rescue his duffel, complete with spare set of clothes, albeit uncomfortable ones. “Oh, but – you’re a cadet,” he murmurs, suddenly looking very sorrowful.

Bones, for the sake of argument, nods. “What of it?”

“In the battle, before Vulcan was destroyed – I’m sorry, most of the others are dead.”

Bones blanches, but there’s an eruption of noise from around the circle. “There was a battle? So it wasn’t a natural disaster!”

Jim feels a little pleased, seeing as he guessed as much ages ago; across the fire, Chekov looks puzzled. “That is what they told you? No, Nero, he destroyed Vulcan before the Earth – ”

“Who the fuck is Nero?” Jim intercedes, his voice managing to drift across the roar of the others.

“I think he’s Romulan,” Chekov replies, frowning a little, “but he said… _I do not speak for the Empire_? I think Starfleet thinks he is a rogue, something like that.”

“Did he say why he did it?” the younger Alex asks, his voice a little soft. Chekov shakes his head.

“It was something to do with Commander – ” he begins, but Cassie’s voice slices across him before he can finish.

“So what’re you doing here?”

Chekov licks his lips, glancing around again. “I had a plan,” he murmurs, “which I thought Starfleet could use to stop Nero. But the Acting Captain – ” He pulls a contemptuous face. “ – he called it – what is the word? _Foolhardy_.” He shrugs. “So, I stole an exploration pod and came here to do it myself.” He frowns. “I crashed, though,” he muses, thoughtfully. “My calculations must have been incorrect… which is, well… unusual.”

“We crashed too,” Jim says in an undertone. “And we’re running out of food and time.”

There’s an uneasy silence.

“What’s your plan?” The voice is young; Timothy’s peering at Chekov, pretending to look bored.

Chekov smiles a little. “There is a man here, on the planet – Montgomery Scott – who postulated a theory of trans-warp beaming.” He pauses at the circle of confused faces; thinking for a second he backtracks, working out how to break it down.

“It means he thinks there is a way for someone to beam onto a ship while it’s travelling at warp speed,” Jim says slowly, frowning. “I think I read his thesis.”

Chekov nods enthusiastically. “I thought, if it was finished, it could be used against Nero, so I came here to see whether he had an equation – and if not, to help him work on it.” He sighs a little. “When I first thought of it I did agree with the Acting Captain; it is very risky. But, yesterday, I heard Starfleet are planning to try and fight Nero and I know that is riskier still, so I decided to come here by myself.”

“He must be the one manning the base,” Cassie murmurs, thoughtfully, then looks a little dispirited. “Of course, with the shuttle busted to hell, there’s no way of you getting over there.”

Chekov looks thoughtful. “Your shuttle, is there any way I could look at it?”

“It’s outside,” Jim replies, waving his hand into the storm, “but I guess we could take you there.”

Bones, to Jim’s surprise, isn’t glaring daggers at him while the little party prepares to go out to the shuttle. Jim quietly walks over to where he’s kneeling, sorting through their newly invigorated med supplies. “I didn’t think they’d _all_ be dead,” Bones says as Jim crouches down beside him. “I mean, with Starfleet being _Starfleet_ , I thought, I don’t know…” Jim slowly puts a hand on his shoulder, and Bones meets his eye.

Jim, Alex and Chekov battle their way over to the shuttle, and for the first time since they landed Jim climbs inside. It’s out of the snowstorm and marginally warmer; Chekov heads straight for the cockpit and looks around, concentrating. “It is difficult, but…” He dives straight underneath the console, and, after a few seconds’ rummaging, the entire thing jumps into life. He crawls out, beaming, and Jim and Alex stand thunderstruck in the doorway.

“You told me you couldn’t fix it,” Jim mutters.

“I couldn’t,” Alex replies, his eyebrows raised.

“I am not an engineer,” Chekov is saying, “but there is little wrong with your engine – it is your computer that is broken, and, yes…” He trails off thoughtfully, nodding to himself. “Yes, I think I can fix this.”

Alex looks thunderstruck. “ _Seriously_?”

“What? Oh, yes,” he replies, smiling. His face drops as a gauge starts pulsing red on the screen. “Ack, you have lost so much _fuel_ , though…”

“We don’t need that much,” Jim murmurs and comes to stand beside him. “Can you get us to the base?”

Chekov’s fingers are flying across the keys; the computer goes through phases of flaming back into life and flickering off again, and Chekov occasionally clicks his tongue or hisses a breath through his teeth. “Yes,” he says slowly, concentrating, “I _think_ I can.”

He grabs Chekov’s arm and pulls him away from the console. “C’mon – Bones’ll have my skin if you start working on this tonight. Get some rest, and you can work on it in the morning.”

For a second, Chekov looks like he’s going to argue; then he nods, flicks another switch and the console splutters and dies.

By the time they’ve battled back into the cave there’s a slow throbbing curling around Jim’s abdomen; Bones is already next to him, plugging a sedative into his arm, and Jim feels the numbness return with a rush of relief. “Strong stuff,” he murmurs.

“Make the most of it, there’s not much left.”

Jim manages to fashion another hammock for Chekov out of a few scrap pieces, fixes his own back on the wall and settles inside it. Bones is still talking in quiet tones to Chekov, and Jim doesn’t need to concentrate to know it’s about Vulcan.

“My ship,” Chekov says, “the _Enterprise_ – ” It’s weird, Jim thinks, how that name is sort of familiar. “ – the lieutenant, Sulu, he didn’t go to warp properly…” A chuckle. “He didn’t disengage the external initial dampeners, I think, and we arrived at Vulcan moments after everyone else… they were all destroyed,” he murmurs, his voice dropping, “all of the starships, gone…”

“I know the main fleet was in the Lorentian system,” Bones mutters, “so I guess they couldn’t get there in time?” There’s no answer; Jim twists in his hammock to see Chekov nodding. “So they used the cadets…” Bones pulls a face torn between disbelief and scathing disapproval.

“We were lucky; Cadet Uhura – ” Bones lets out a little noise, and Chekov’s face twitches in surprise. “Ah, you know her? Yes, she is fine – ” A wry smile crosses Chekov’s face. “More than fine, if the rumours about the Acting Captain are true. Well, Cadet Uhura, she had intercepted the message from the Klingon warships herself – ”

“Warning about the Romulans?”

“Yes, and they said something about, it was odd… a lightning storm, but in space? I had never heard of such a thing – the Captain looked worried, but he never said anything…”

 _Lightning storm in space_. Jim thinks about the phrase; it’s also familiar somehow, but he can’t work out where he knows it from.

“Anyway, we tried to stop them at Vulcan – we managed to damage the drill, but it was too late. Nero took the Captain as a hostage, and I…” His voice chokes a little. “I rescued a few of the Elders, but the Commander’s mother, I lost her.”

Bones thanks him softly with a touch on the arm – Chekov mildly says that it was nothing – and walks away, towards their hammocks; Jim swiftly pretends to be asleep. He startles as Bones’ fingers rest across his forehead, checking him for fever, and then press against his neck to find his pulse. They stop on the back of his hand for no reason whatsoever and stay there for a while; Jim can feel them trembling. Then they’re gone and Bones is sliding into his hammock, reaching out to flick off the torchlight.


	4. Chapter 4

Bones shakes him awake the next day; he fusses over his pulse for a moment, and helps him to his feet. “Go out with Chekov to the shuttle,” he mutters in an undertone. “I don’t trust any of the others to make sure he’s okay.”

Jim sits next to Chekov by the fire. He’s eating the largest breakfast out of the group and looks slightly guilty about it. “I worked in a garage for a summer a couple years back at home – do you want me to try to give you a hand?”

Chekov nods, finishing his food and throwing the wrapper onto the fire. “That would be good.”

Alex walks out with them to the shuttle, seeing as he is, after all, the pilot, and once inside Chekov starts working on the console straight away. Jim starts off by clearing away some of the snow around it; it’s heavy going, seeing as the snow’s constantly settling and undoing the last five minutes’ work, but Jim manages to figure out a clever enough routine to get access to the engine. The metal around it at the front took the impact when they crashed, and it’s crumpled in on itself, but the engine’s set further back and other than where the fuel tank got clipped it’s unharmed. Jim checks the cables at the back are connected up to the main console, attempts to bash the metal back into shape so it’s not so dented, and, after fixing the notch in the fuel tank, puts a barrel and a half in from the store inside the shuttle. He finds a toolbox beside the fuel shipment and starts working on the busted door; the work takes up his hands but not his head, and he remembered last night where he knew Chekov’s phrase from.

When he was – well, probably around Alex’s age – he found, in his mother’s study, a report a couple pages thick sat on her desk. It was odd, he remembers, because it had the Starfleet logo watermarking every page, and the general rule in their house was that Starfleet had nothing to do with them and they had nothing to do with Starfleet. His mom’s handwriting was scrawled in neat little pencil in the margins and between the lines; he’d scanned these first and realised she’d been making corrections, verifying facts. Then, seeing as she was off-planet and Frank was at the supermarket, he picked it up, took it to his room and read the whole thing.

The ship lurches underneath him, sending his toolbox sliding down its length; Chekov’s slowly restoring the systems, one by one, and the four metal feet have slid out from under its belly, one at each corner, propping them above the level of the snow. Under his feet, a clunk vibrates along the floor, and the access ramp slides out; the computer tries to slide the door back, but Jim’s got half of it off its hinges while he fixes it. Alex sticks his head out, sees Jim working on the door, mutters something to Chekov and disappears back inside again.

The report had turned out to be a dissertation, sent for verification by a cadet – Pine, maybe? Pike? He stills for a moment, frowning. Pike was the guy who tried to recruit him, and he’d mentioned a dissertation – it’s obviously a small world. In any case, it spelt out the whole mysterious attack that had led to the death of his father. Later, his mom would try and describe it to him, but he’d shrug and say he already knew about it; she wouldn’t question how. It was a weird phrase he specifically remembered from the report; _the anomaly, an impossibility, vaguely resembled a lightning storm in space, and concealed a large, complex craft the computers were incapable of identifying_. His mother hadn’t corrected that sentence.

Thinking back, it sounded pretty similar – could it be the same ship? What the hell has it been doing for twenty-seven years to only now start blowing up planets? Come to think of it, how the hell could it do that anyway? Jim remembers his mom’s visit to Romulus, just before she died; there wasn’t anything particularly advanced about their technology, and nor were the people particularly violent – well, not to the extent of the Klingons, in any rate. With a kick, Jim pushes the door back in place, and it slides with a faint wheeze. It’s violently cold outside, and Jim pulls it to again – it doesn’t quite meet in the top-left corner, but it’s serviceable for just a shuttle run.

There’s a familiar crackle running when Jim enters the cockpit; Chekov’s got the radio working, and is sat in front of it, deathly white. “They confronted him – the fleet, in the Lorentian system,” Chekov says, quietly. “They were destroyed.”

Jim feels a little sick. “All of them? Your ship, too?”

Chekov shrugs. “I don’t know,” he murmurs, miserable. “They don’t say.” He sighs, and pushes his fingers into his forehead. “I was too late.”

There’s an awkward moment. Jim realises he’s almost accustomed to the deaths Chekov reports; feeling uneasy, he shatters the silence. “Is the ship ready to go?” Jim asks Alex, and in response Chekov flicks a switch on the dashboard; the ship, beneath them, hums into life. He smiles at Chekov, claps him on the back and walks back through to the main area, sticking his head out to look up at the sky. “I don’t think there’s any point waiting for the weather to clear – Alex, check all the seats are ready and harnessed. I’m going back to the cave.”

He grins at Cassie as he walks back in; she yells, jumps on him and does a weird little dance. Around the cave, they start rushing to pack away their things, managing mostly to stuff their sleeping bags back in their cases and roll them up inside their hammocks. Jim does both his and Bones’, seeing as the latter is fussing over their food supplies and the medkit, and chucks him the bundle as he walks over. The others move out towards the shuttle in single file, holding hands, led by Cassie and Jack and Sébastian bringing up the rear. Then it’s just Bones and Jim, standing in the cave, and Jim’s hit with a sudden wave of nostalgia.

“It’s almost like home, huh?” he murmurs to him, grinning.

Bones rolls his eyes. “Hell of a home,” he mutters, glowering. Their eyes catch for a second; then he’s watching Bones walk out of the cave and disappear into the snow. Jim casts about one more time, douses the fire and follows him.

Bones finishes a headcount just as Jim climbs in. “Full compliment,” he announces, and reaches round to pull the door to; it wheezes again and doesn’t quite click home. “Whose workmanship was that, I wonder?” He grins at Jim’s foul look and Jim skulks off into the cockpit, where Cassie, Chekov and Alex are tightly crammed in.

“Ready when you are,” Alex confirms, and Jim walks back through, standing by the partly-open door to watch their cave disappear into the snow.

It’s only half an hour’s flight in the shuttle before they’re out of the storm basin and speeding above the ice plain, and an hour before they reach the cracked ice, the furthest point Jim and Bones had made it to. He notices Bones watching out the window, a little pale, and wonders whether he’s thinking about the _thing_ that chased them – but he keeps looking up to Jim and pretending he hasn’t; Jim meets them the last time and Bones hastily glances away. He supposes the last time he was here he did nearly die – it just seems stupid to worry over, seeing as he’s still alive.

The other side of the plain sees thick white snow back on the ground; there’s hills and crests all around, and Jim knows that even if they’d made it this far they’d have got hopelessly lost. The shuttle’s computer has a map of the area – a sketchy one, and there are more than a few wrong turns and near-misses – and then they’re skimming along flats, approaching the base that’s now clearly in sight, nestled in a semi-circle of ice cliffs and a lot of snow.

They bring the shuttle down a little to the left of it, and a green… _thing_ comes out to meet them; it glances once at them beadily and then begins to walk back inside. Chekov, adamant that that _isn’t_ Montgomery Scott, takes it as an invitation and marches off after him; Jim looks amusedly at Bones and follows.

Inside, it’s pretty cold, but at least it’s not _outside_ – even better, there’s a room off to the left full of freeze-dried ration packs that most of them welcome heartily. Away from the group, Chekov’s attempting to talk to the thing that brought them here; it’s staring back with blank eyes, saying nothing, and Chekov peters off, dispirited. The thing raises a hand, points a short, pudgy finger at Chekov, Jim and Bones in turn, beckons ominously and marches off; Jim looks at Bones, shrugs once and follows.

The main room is huge, full of steam and contains what looks like the shell of a shuttle in the centre. The green thing leads them to a console in the middle, whacks the sleeping man with a spanner and trundles off to the other side of the room. The man wakes with a shout, and looks between Jim’s tattered, bloodsoaked t-shirt and jeans, Chekov’s grubby yellow uniform, and Bones’ grubbier red one. “Who the hell are you?”

“Montgomery Scott?” Chekov asks, bobbing a little with excitement.

“That’s me,” he replies, a little cautiously.

“Excellent! We must begin work at once!” With that, he catches hold of Scott’s arm, pulls him to his feet and drags him, protesting, over to the shuttle in the centre.

Jim notices then that Scott wasn’t sat at the console on his own; when he’s dragged aside, an incredibly old Vulcan is revealed a few feet away, perched on a chair and looking quite unsettlingly at Jim. He stands and splays his fingers in the customary salute. “Ambassador Spock,” he says softly, by means of an introduction.

Jim nods. “Jim Kirk.” An odd expression flickers in Spock’s eyes – Jim had forgotten about the whole no-emotion thing the Vulcans had going on – and he nods in reply. Bones introduces himself; Spock nods, again, but his eyes don’t leave Jim.

“C’mon,” Bones mutters to his right. “Let’s go make sure Mr Scott ain’t being molested all over the dashboard.”

They notice, once they’re inside the shuttle, that things have calmed down considerably – presumably Chekov stopped geeking out for long enough to explain what he wanted Scott for. They also notice that it’s not really a shuttle; it appeared to be one from the outside, but inside it’s an empty shell, three walls lined with consoles and one covered by two weird, cupboard-like spaces Jim realises are probably beam pads.

“It’s very flattering you came all this way,” Scott’s saying, his expression earnest, “but I still can’t get that equation to work. There’s something – wrong with it.”

Spock’s crept up behind them, which is completely unnerving; Jim looks over and notices it looks like he’s trying very hard not to say something. “Together,” Chekov announces, beaming, “we will _make_ it work.” And despite Scott’s best attempts, he won’t hear another word against it.

Jim, Bones and Spock leave them to it; Jim wanders back outside and sprawls on a chair by the console. Bones sits down next to him, yawning widely; Spock takes a third chair, still staring oddly at Jim. Eventually, he breaks what Jim had considered to be quite a comfortable silence. “There is a lot I have to tell you,” he murmurs, softly, “and there is not much time.” He starts fiddling with his sleeve, splaying his fingers and leaning towards him. “Please, it would be easier to – ”

“Wait a second,” Bones commands, steely-faced. “You are not practicing any weird Vulcan mindfuck on him, not when he’s – ”

“There are no maleffects, Doctor,” Spock murmurs, appearing a little confused.

“I don’t care,” Bones snaps. “You’ve got something to tell him, you can damn well tell me too.” He pauses. “And,” almost as an afterthought, with surprising vehemence, “I’m not a doctor.”

Spock does have something to tell him. It’s probably the longest and most outrageous story Jim’s ever heard – Spock is from the _future_ , and not just the future, a _parallel universe’s_ future where he and Jim are best buddies, he’s captain of the _Enterprise_ , no less – well, he used to be, because he’s dead now. Nero’s from there too – which, Jim supposes, does explain how he has technology none of them has ever seen – and, a hundred-odd years in the future, Spock fails to stop the destruction of Romulus by a supernova. Nero shows up, and as Spock tries – will try? – to destroy the supernova, they get pulled into a black hole, dragged back in time and Nero blows up his father. (Jim feels his fingers curl up into fists.) Spock arrives twenty-odd years later (though it’s mere heartbeats to him) – which, Jim realises, does explain the huge time gap between the Kelvin and Vulcan – to find Nero waiting for him to whisk him off here and blow up Vulcan in front of his eyes, helpless to do anything but watch. Talk about poetry.

Spock scans their incredulous faces and lets out a small sigh. “If you had let me perform the mind-meld, I would have been able to show you that this is the truth.”

“More like make us _think_ it is,” Bones mutters, darkly.

The thing is, the more Jim thinks about it the more it seems to make sense – there’s little bits that slot in place remarkably well with what he already knows. There is, however, still one huge problem.

“But, seriously,” he says, frowning, “ _time travel_?”

“I understand it is difficult to accept,” Spock replies.

It’s true that no one has ever made it through a black hole – no probes, certainly, and ships that have entered it have never shown any survivors; the general consensus is that they show the ultimate absence of anything, a vacuum that could not possibly sustain life.

Time travel is… improbable – but not impossible.

“Hold on a minute,” Bones interjects. “It makes sense for him to destroy Vulcan – an eye for an eye and all that bullshit – but what’s he got against the Earth? And, come to think of it, Tyrellia?”

“That,” Spock sighs, “even I cannot comprehend. The complexity of my heritage could offer some explanation for Earth – but it is unlikely Nero is aware of it. Perhaps the transition through time has confused his mind, or the grief at the loss of his planet has driven him to insanity.”

Jim drums his fingers absently on the counter. “Is there any way he can be stopped?”

Spock looks grave – either a major lapse for him, considering the no-emotion thing, or just his general state of being. “He possesses technology Starfleet is incapable of defeating – that much has already been proven on more than one occasion. The material he uses is called Red Matter. It is of Vulcan origin; I had planned to use it against the supernova which destroyed Romulus, but Nero gained control of it after he seized my ship. It is particularly volatile material and would be easily destroyed, but gaining access to it will not be easy.”

Jim nods. These days, nothing is. He backtracks through Spock’s lengthy description. “So,” he concludes slowly, “the problem isn’t beating him, it’s getting there in the first place.” He glances at the stripped shuttle, and hopes Chekov and Scott think up _something_.

 

 

The others have productively spent their time eating half of Scott’s rations and loudly deciding where they’re going to sleep – Delta Vega’s Starfleet base is pretty deserted, but it does contain a dorm room of fifty beds in case one professor decides to be particularly vindictive to their class and delegate them a field assignment there. Jim thinks about the map they have of the area sat on their shuttle’s hard drive, and feels a little guilty.

He and Bones naturally get worst pick; people have crowded to the door or the window, leaving the area in the middle untouched, and Jim drops himself down on one bed, and Bones does the same (albeit a little more elegantly) to the right of him. Scott appears to have his own sleeping quarters, as does the green _thing_ (which Scott seems to call Keenser), to which Jim feels a little relieved.

Chekov doesn’t look subdued when he enters the dorm, picking a bed a few along from Bones’, but definitely thoughtful – Jim takes it as a good sign and leaves him to it, wandering around the base for exploration’s sake until he finds Scott again in the main room, sipping something hot from a flask and frowning at a viewscreen. Jim moves off, meaning to leave him to it, but Scott waves him over, and he takes a seat beside him and drinks from the proffered flask, which turns out to be tea.

“You must be pretty smart,” Jim says after a sip, handing back the flask, “if you can do half the things Chekov seems to think you can. How did you end up on this asshole of a planet?”

Scott looks incredibly guilty. “I, eh, had a _disagreement_ with an Admiral over some _simple_ relativistic physics. He seemed to think that the range of transporting something like a grapefruit was limited to about a hundred miles. I told him that I could not only beam a grapefruit from one planet to the adjacent planet in the same system – which is easy, by the way – I could do it with a life form. Well, I ended up using Admiral Archer’s prized beagle as a test case.”

Jim raises an eyebrow. “What happened to it?”

“No idea. I’ll tell you if it ever turns up.” He shifts in his seat a little. “I do feel guilty about that.” He sighs and glances at Jim. “Look, I realise that there’s a lot riding on me and the kid working something out, but that equation – it’s just theory. I haven’t been able to get it to work for years, so I don’t see why it’s suddenly going to change now.”

 _Because it has to_ , Jim thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He knows how unlikely it is, too.

 

 

Bones is still sitting awake when Jim re-enters the dorm room; a few of the beds are silent, though, so Jim doesn’t raise his voice above a whisper, and Bones does the same. He’s itching for a change of clothes and a shower – the latter, whilst being offered, is only available ice-cold (as the heating’s botched up again) and Jim’s not sure he’s that desperate yet. He sits on his bed, sliding off his shoes, and tries to pick out Bones in the moonlight.

“How’s the stomach?”

Jim shrugs. “I’m alive.” To be honest, it’s starting to throb again, but Jim’s pretty sure he’s lived through worse.

There’s a pause as they both get into bed, and Jim stares absently at the concrete ceiling. “I really didn’t think you were going to be,” Bones mutters through the dark, “when I had to operate on you in that goddamn cave.”

“Yeah, well, I am. Thanks to you.”

 

 

Scott’s looking cheerful when Jim walks in in the morning – no overnight breakthrough with the trans-warp beaming, but there is a place for their motley band of refugees. “I just finished speaking to a friend over in Risa where they’re collecting the survivors. They’re sending a shuttle over this afternoon.”

The others seem pretty excited by the prospect – probably just for the fact that they’ll get off this goddamn planet – but Jim wants to stick around, just because he feels like he _should_ help. He’s part of this, in some weird, fucked-up way – and so, it seems, is Bones. Spock had, after all, spoken to him like he knew him, though there had been no mention of him in Spock’s grand tale of the life he could have had.

He searches out Spock after he’s spoken to Scott; he’s overseeing the others’ preparation for the shuttle’s arrival tomorrow (a group which, Jim notes with interest, doesn’t include Bones). He goes to stand next to him, and Spock greets him warmly. “I wanted to ask – in this world that you come from… I knew my father?”

“Yes,” Spock replies, nodding sagely. “He was your inspiration for joining Starfleet.” The unfairness rips through Jim, and he fights the urge to bitch and whine. Nero took away his whole life from him – “but,” Spock continues, as if reading his mind, “you should not dwell on what you do not have, but what you have in its place.”

Jim scowls. He has a comparatively-shitty childhood with a heartbroken mother and a stepfather who, well, he wasn’t _that_ bad, but he _doesn’t_ have a planet, thanks to Nero, he’s an _orphan_ , thanks to Nero –

There’s Bones, though.

There’s always Bones.

“I know the equation for trans-warp beaming,” Spock says, a tad suddenly. “Being from the future does have its advantages.”

Jim stares at him. “Why the hell haven’t you given it to him before?!”

Spock looks at him, slowly. “I would have thought that much was obvious. Consider, Jim; I would be rendering his life’s work meaningless. I would be taking away any achievement as he himself would not be making it – consider how that would make him _feel_.”

Jim’s first instinct is to say _fuck it_ – especially seeing as it turns out the fate of the whole goddamn universe rests on the use of that equation. But, then again, there’s a small voice understanding what Spock has to say.

“Couldn’t you… break it to him gently?” Spock raises an eyebrow. _I’ll take that as a no._

“I can try.” He paces across the dorm room and out of the door; Jim follows at a run, and watches as Spock approaches Chekov and Scott, who, heads bowed, are furiously discussing a set of test results on a small console. Jim stares in amazement as Spock interrupts them quietly, and then, in a long, monotonous speech complete with hand-waving illustrations, talks. Scott’s face transforms from incredulity to outright shock, and then he bolts back inside the shuttle, which lets out a long whine of angry protest. Seconds later, he jumps back out of it, arms raised, looking ecstatic.

“It works! Fuck me, it actually _works_!” Jim sprints forwards in the room; Scotty’s shaking his head in disbelief. “I mean, I’ll have to recalibrate the whole machine, which’ll take time, but…” Spock very nearly smiles, and looks at Jim. Scotty tugs Chekov and Jim to one side, and starts gesturing wildly, trying to explain. “See, it suddenly occurred to me – what if it’s _space_ that’s moving? And – ”

“That’s great, Scotty,” Jim interrupts, “but seriously, I don’t want to know.”

The console to Jim’s left makes an angry screech; they all jump as Scott jogs over, pushing a message up on screen. “Ah, the shuttle’s arriving soon.”

“I’ll go tell the others,” Jim murmurs, and gets out of the room.

The next hour or so is filled frantically by trying to get everyone ready – it’s hardly like they’ve got a lot of possessions, but people keep floundering over trivial things and it ends up taking a while to get them sorted. Jack, strapping up a handmade bag containing a sweater and a self-assembled washkit, works quietly beside Jim. “You’re not coming with us, are you?” she asks, softly.

Jim shakes his head. “No.”

“There are some of the others, you know,” she murmurs, “who want to stay behind and help with Pavel’s plan.” She grimaces. “Most, though, just want to get out of here. Then again, I’m not sure the refugee camps are going to be much better.”

“Tell them no one’s staying behind,” he mutters in reply, and drops the radio he’s fixing onto the nearest bed. “This thing is too dangerous for anyone to get involved – ”

“Except you,” she points out, eyebrow raised.

“Except me.” _And_ , he thinks to himself, _Bones_. Hopefully.

 

 

The shuttle arrives not long after; they round everyone up outside and start climbing eagerly on. Some of the men hesitate, looking back at Jim, but the Starfleet lieutenant who’s come to collect them insists they go on. Jim hangs around the back of the line, desperately trying to think of a reasonable excuse; then, he sees Bones skip the queue and start talking rapidly to him, occasionally gesturing at Jim. Eventually, the lieutenant nods, and Bones marches back down the line, grabbing his arm with a gruff “c’mon.”

“What did you tell him?” Jim asks once they’re standing in the door of the base, looking back up as the shuttle starts firing up its engines.

“That I’m a med student commissioned here to study the local wildlife. Thankfully, he didn’t check for ID; the uniform was enough.”

“And me?”

“Oh, you’re my assistant.” He glances at Jim wryly. “Think nurse, without the uniform.”

Jim opens his mouth to reply (euphemistically, naturally), but spots Cassie and the younger Alex staring out of the last window at them. He raises his hand and performs a mock-salute, two fingers flicking from against his forehead into the air; Alex grins a little cheekily and Cassie nods, waving once. He has a little pang of regret; he wishes he’d said a better goodbye.

Then Chekov barrels into them from behind, jabbering about Scott’s theory, and the shuttle’s soaring into the wintry sky.

They walk back to the main console; Chekov shoots off back inside the shuttle to Scott who, if the loud, Scottish swearing is anything to go by, is frantically working inside. “A Scot called Scott,” Jim muses, smiling. “What do you reckon the odds of that are?”

Bones shrugs. “Nowadays, the odds of just finding a Scot are probably a million to one.”

There’s someone missing – Jim glances around, frowning. “Spock’s gone,” he thinks aloud, his frown deepening.

He comes this close to yelping when a gruff voice between his legs answers. “He went on the shuttle.” Just when Jim’s mind is running through some rather disgusting possibilities it turns out to be Keenser, who slides out from under the console, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. “He said he had something to do.”

Once he’s got over the shock of Keenser being able to _speak_ , Jim feels a little annoyed. Spock’s a connection to a life he didn’t have… a life he desperately wanted to learn more about. _It never happened_ , he reminds himself quietly. _It’s probably better not to think about it._

 

 

Scotty finds them pilfering from his food supply, but doesn’t look all that bothered by it. “It’s working,” he breathes, looking a little awed. “Of course, it’s still calibrating in the map, but it’s _working – working_!”

“Calibrating in the map,” Jim echoes; it sounds like a load of computer crap to him. “How’s long’s that going to take?”

Scotty shrugs. “Eight, nine hours? Tomorrow morning at the latest.”

Jim nods. Nero could destroy a lot of things in nine hours, but after those nine hours, Jim could destroy Nero.

After the food’s warmed up, Bones surveys him, an eyebrow raised. “Y’know, any good psych could have a field day with you.”

“They’ve tried,” Jim mutters. “Believe me.”

Bones eats a little more freeze-dried ravioli, pulls a face, but keeps eating more. “Still,” he asks, softly, “you’re not doing this out of some fucked-up revenge, are you? ‘Cause that’s all kinds of wrong.”

Jim thinks about his parents – for his father, a valiant death was still, in the end, a death, no matter how many wings of children’s hospitals got named after him or medals got sent home. For his mother, well, it was just plain wrong. “Yeah,” he says, finally. “Yeah, it is revenge. It just happens to be saving the universe, too.”

 

 

Jim’s fucked.

Literally, it’s over the cheap plastic table he’d broken at the age of fifteen, dropping Frank’s truck’s suspension unit onto it, slick with grease and slipping through his fingers. The table had been one of his favourite parts of his first room, back when they’d spent a year in Delaware; he’d liked the soft coolness of it against his fingers and the roughness of the doodles he’d created over the years.

Figuratively, it’s because Bones is the one fucking him.

 

 

Jim starts awake, his breath knifing cold into his throat, and through the dark his eyes find Bones’ back, sleeping in the bed next to him.

 _Congratulations_ , he thinks to himself bitterly. _You actually managed to make things even more complicated than they already are._

 

 

Jim finds some suspiciously good coffee in the supplies room and wanders around the base, warming himself up and trying very hard not to think about an ever-growing list of things. Bones doesn’t even have to be awake for him to know this is going to be _awkward_.

Scotty’s bent over a bench when he walks into the main room, whistling to himself amiably, and Jim wonders if he’s pulled an all-nighter. Chekov’s beside him, half-heartedly watching whatever he’s doing across the work surface. Scotty grins at his approach, and reveals his work with a flourish. “Buttonhole microphone,” he declares, smiling broadly. “And the earpiece to match. Mr Chekov here spent the night telling me about this plan of his – and, well, I figured these might come in handy.” He leans over and flicks the microphone already attached to Chekov’s chest, earning himself a filthy look on Chekov’s part.

“Yeah,” Jim agrees, sliding the microphone in circles around the bench. “Will they work over the long distance, though?”

Scotty looks appalled. “Are you _doubting_ my mechanical prowess and expertise?”

Jim holds a hand up in defeat. “I was just _asking_. I didn’t know they could, that’s all.” He jabs his thumb back towards the stripped shuttle in the middle. “Is it ready?”

“She’s looking pretty good,” Scotty confirms, beaming. Bones slumps into the room, looking rumpled and irritable, and he stands opposite Jim across the workbench. Scotty’s frowning to himself; a puzzle he can’t work out. “I’ve been trying to work out who to send – I’m not _supposed_ to leave the base – ”

“I’m going,” Jim says, and attempts to emphasise in his tone that this is Not To Be Disputed.

Scotty doesn’t get it. He snorts, shaking his head. “In case you’ve forgotten, you’re a _civilian_. I can’t let you go charging off after Nero, my superiors would have a field day.”

“I’ll go,” Chekov pipes up beside him, but then it’s Bones’ turn to snort.

“You’re just a kid.”

“I’m higher up in Starfleet than you are,” Chekov retorts, a little testily.

“Well, you can’t go on your own,” Bones mutters back, more than a little grumpy over Chekov’s remark.

“Which,” Jim intercedes, “is why I should go with him.”

“Unnacceptable,” Scotty pronounces. “Impossible.”

With Jim’s incredible powers of deduction, he can see this isn’t going anywhere.

He _has to get on that ship_.

“You can’t go because you _have_ to stay here, no one else can operate the damn thing – Bones can’t go, because…” He thinks wildly, but there’s nothing coming up.

“I might be needed here?” Bones suggests, imbued with the customary sarcasm, and Jim jumps on it.

“Exactly!”

With twin expressions of complete incredulity, Scotty and Bones stare at him.

“Come on,” he mutters, trying not to whine, and turns to Bones. “ _Please_.”

Bones throws his hands up in defeat, but Scotty stands his ground; when he begins to protest, Bones looks him squarely in the eye. “Shut up.”

It seems to do the trick.

They all tramp into the shuttle; Keenser, perched on top of a shelf, refuses to budge, and watches beadily as Scotty starts scanning the consoles, plugging in information with swiftly-moving fingers. After a minor, whispered tussle with Chekov, Jim attaches the microphone to his shirt and fixes in the earpiece.

“Hold on a second,” he mutters, and sits back from the console, his palms slapping down onto the screen, looking dispirited. “How the hell am I meant to find that ship?”

Jim’s stomach drops. “You mean there’s no way of tracing it?”

Scotty shakes his head. “If it was Starfleet, yes, I’d be able to search for its coordinates as easy as anything, but as according to my computers the ship doesn’t even exist yet…”

“So what do we do?”

Scotty shrugs. “We wait. Until something comes up.” He gestures at the radio.

By the time they hear anything over the longwave, Nero could be out there destroying more planets, and it’ll be far too late. The idea is pretty much unbearable – to have the ability to stop Nero but to be completely incapable of doing so.

“What other choice do we have?” Bones mutters, the question rhetorical. He settles himself in a chair; to his right, Jim does the same.

They wait.

 

 

Jim can’t imagine doing this for more than one day; spending the rest of his life sat here _praying_ for a sight of the ship, anywhere, staring at the metal grille and willing it to make a sound. Naturally, it doesn’t work.

They don’t, however, have to wait until the end of Jim’s life, though it’s arguable that if they had to wait much longer the daggers Bones is throwing with his eyes would have turned all too real. Halfway through the afternoon, the faintest crackle across the speakers mentions a brief sighting of the ship in the Mariah system – it’s not much, it’s not much at all, but –

“Is that enough?” Jim shouts, jumping to his feet. “Can you track it with that?”

“ _Wait_ – ” Scotty frantically gestures for silence, then, “yes!” Just as the radio announces the ship’s return to warp, a green light flickers up on Scotty’s screen. “Locked and loaded,” he beams.

“Scotty,” Jim replies earnestly, “you are a _genius_.”

Chekov, to his left, looks slightly affronted.

Jim settles himself in the beam mat to the left hand side; Chekov stands to his right, his hands stuffed in his pockets. Across the shuttle, Bones is staring at him with an oddly constipated expression. “Don’t – ” he starts, and his forehead crumples into a frown. “Don’t – die.”

Jim grins. “I’ll try my best.”

Scotty punches the button.

 

 

When they materialise, Jim gets an odd creeping shiver shooting up his spine; once his brain’s defogged and got over the dizzying transport he realises it’s because he’s ankle-deep in dubiously-coloured water, and he swears, jumping clear, the unbearable squelch of wet socks seeping through from near his feet. Slightly less dramatically, Chekov steps out behind him. Jim pinches the mike sewn into his collar; “Scotty, can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” his earpiece replies, its tone definitely Scottish. “I take it you’ve both arrived in one piece?”

“Yup.” He grins at Chekov, shakes a little water out of his shoe and stares determinedly down the corridor. “C’mon, we’ve got ourselves a universe to save.”

 

 

Ten minutes of shuffling espionage later, and they find themselves back in the same place that they started. “Fuck me,” Jim mutters, most unprofessionally. “Nobody told me this place was a freaking _labyrinth_.” Chekov, beside him, looks equally lost. “What we need,” Jim murmurs, frowning, “what we need is a map, or something.” He snorts. “But the chances of coming across one of those are – ”

“A million to one,” Bones helpfully supplies in his earpiece.

“Thanks.”

“I’m here all week.”

But, at the other end of the hall, Chekov’s smile is suddenly getting wider and wider. Jim jogs over, peering at the section of wall Chekov’s staring at, and his eyes widen suddenly. “You are fucking _kidding_ me.”

“Un-be-fucking- _lievable_ ,” Bones swears, and Jim’s smile increases. The thing carved into the wall does in fact look remarkably like a map – from the looks of things it’s showing access points to – who’d have thought it? – the _ventilation shafts_. The irony fills Jim with inexplicable glee. He hurriedly sets about trying to read it, only to realise with a gut-punching wrench of dismay that –

“It’s written in Romulan,” he mutters into his microphone, and Scotty swears profusely through his ear, making it sting.

(Unbeknownst to Jim, Bones’ face twists in a wry smile, galaxies away. “Where’s a pretty lady when you need one?” he murmurs to himself.)

“What are the odds of one of us being able to read Romulan?” Jim mutters, and it’s meant to be rhetorical, but Chekov suddenly grabs his arm and shoves him aside, fingers scrabbling across the map.

“I can do that,” he whispers, his eyes turning glassy. He turns to Jim with a face flushed with excitement. “I can do that!”

Jim stares at him in utter disbelief. A million to fucking one.

“Where would they keep it?” Chekov wonders aloud, frowning slightly and leaning back, scanning across the whole display. “A cargo hold? A storage bay? … there is this,” Chekov murmurs, prodding his finger at part of the map. “The label, I think it translates… secure?”

Jim shakes his head, still reeling a little, and shrugs. “I… Well, it’s the best we’ve got so far.” Chekov does a double-take, spotting another point on the map, and then spends a minute planning the route, closes his eyes to memorise it and sets off at a quiet run; Jim follows. Every single tunnel they run through looks exactly the same, but Chekov doesn’t waver in his direction, his face set in determination. They pause briefly in a supply closet, scanning for something – _anything_ – they can use; Jim lifts a small hand phaser, and Chekov a handheld that turns out to be busted. “Where did you learn to read Romulan, anyway?”

Chekov shrugs, scanning the hallway outside for passers-by. “I read ahead on my studies; I had nothing to do. I was bored. Besides,” he adds as they step into the corridor, “it’s almost like Russian. If you squint.”

The vaguely labelled _secure_ room turns out, in fact, to be completely deadlock sealed, security card operational only. When they realise as much Chekov’s forehead clears and he nods – apparently, it all makes sense now. Jim manages to surprise-attack a Romulan heading for the room and palms his pass, which they swipe through the reader and walk inside, the door sliding shut behind them.

The ship in the middle of the room is one of the weirdest he’s ever seen, looking like some unfortunate breeding accident between a bird-of-prey and a jellyfish, and Jim’s never seen anything like it.

There’s a lurching shudder under their feet; the ship’s dropped out of warp. An icy cold spreads across Jim’s stomach – the Red Matter in that ship; is Nero planning to use it to destroy another planet? Are they already hanging above the next victim? There’s no way of telling – it’s not like the ship’s well ventilated and frequently dispersed with handy portholes. Still, something as big as that drill – Jim reckons he’d be able to at least _hear_ it working underneath him. It occurs to him there’s another sure-fire way of testing it; he drops his head to next to the microphone and whispers, “Bones?”

“What?!”

“Just testing.”

Chekov drags him over to a computer console. They’re set slightly in an alcove, out of sight of the guards patrolling around Spock’s stolen ship – because, he thinks a little miserably, it’d be too much to ask for it to be unguarded – but at this end of it Jim has to duck behind an oil barrel to keep out of sight.

“You need a distraction,” Chekov mutters, fingers pacing over the keys, “a diversion.” He punches a key, suddenly, and across the other side of the room a corridor blows up. Jim stares at him as every single guard floods the chamber and runs, panicking, over to the site of the explosion. “Unstable material,” Chekov murmurs, looking sombre, his eyes flashing with amusement, “dilithium.” Jim starts making his way over to the now-deserted ship, expecting Chekov to follow, but he doesn’t; he grabs Jim’s arm and they halt in the middle of the bay. “The Romulans, they took my captain as hostage,” he explains, looking solemn. “I have to do _something_. I know where the prison cells are – ” Well, that explains his hesitation at the map. “ – and it will not take me long. I’ll meet you back on Delta Vega?”

Jim nods, claps Chekov on the shoulder for good luck, and the two of them peel apart. Jim takes advantage of the panicking guards to slip easily up the ship’s ramp; its blazingly-white interior is a painful contrast to the Romulan’s dingy green, and he blinks, suddenly blinded. The main room is circular, with the opaque Red Matter held silently in the middle, and the steering area branching off in front of him. “Computer, what’s your manufacture date and origin?”

“Stardate 2387, commissioned by the Vulcan Science Academy,” it tells him in a cool, female voice. More evidence to be filed in the neat little box. _Computers can be reprogrammed_ , he reminds himself. He’s done more than a few himself.

He turns back to the column of Red Matter hanging gloopily in the middle. There’s a lot of power in those cubic feet – a lot of death, too. He presses a hand to the lukewarm glass, and it’s strong and thick under his fingers. There’s no way he can fly the ship out of here unnoticed, and besides, it really would be the perfect revenge if a black hole opened up in the middle of Nero’s ship. But how is he meant to get the stuff to react? A bomb would do the trick, but even if by some miracle he happened to find the components lying around, would he find the materials to make a self-destruct? A timer?

The thought hits him slowly, sizzling like lemon juice, burning, running down his throat. He leans into his mike again. “Bones,” he murmurs, “is Chekov back with the captain yet?”

“Negative,” Bones replies, and then pauses. “Jim, what are you thinking?”

Jim never gets the chance to answer, because there’s a very angry Romulan pointing a gun straight at his face.

It’s the Romulan he stole the pass off before, he realises, who appears to be in some position of authority; at his shout, the guards flood back up the ramp and look infuriated to find Jim in there. “Drop the weapon, human,” he spits, eyes flashing theatrically.

Jim curls his fingers round the phaser. He can’t afford to lose it, especially seeing as it’s already slotting into his plan. “Nero?” he asks, and the Romulan suddenly looks irritated.

“No,” he mutters, rather petulantly, “I’m _not_ Nero. Why does everyone _always_ think that? I’ll say it again, _human_ ; drop your weapon.” Jim casts about, thinking – he just has to buy them a little more _time_ –

There’s a mad scuffling and swearing in his earpiece, and Jim’s certain there’s more than two voices coming through. “Bones, is that Chekov and the captain?”

The Romulans stare at him, clearly thinking he’s gone mad, and then the lead one spots the buttonhole mike on his front. “Remove it!” he yells, and Romulans start flying at him left, right and centre. Somewhere in the fray one of them gets through and tears out a considerable chunk of Jim’s shirt, also taking the mike – the others back off a bit when Jim brings up his gun and sends one smoking to the floor, but the damage has been done. Still, they don’t know about the earpiece, and it thankfully still seems to be working.

“Yeah, that’s them back now – Jim? Jim, promise me you’re not going to do anything stu – ”

Jim points his phaser directly at the tank containing the Red Matter. “Fuck you,” he spits at the Romulan, and pulls the trigger.

The result is remarkably anti-climatic. The phaser blast rebounds off the casing, flips straight back at Jim and sends him scrambling to the floor, avoiding it only narrowly. It reverberates a few more times off the walls – the Romulans don’t even flinch – and eventually, it fizzles and dies. _Reinforced glass_ , he realises. _I should’ve guessed as much._ The Romulan walks across to him, stamps on his hand and he hisses, dropping the phaser with a clatter. It’s kicked away, and another Romulan seizes him from behind, dragging him to half-balance on his feet. The first Romulan leans over, grabs hold of his neck and pushes his head up, glaring at him with disgust, his phaser worming into Jim’s stomach. Jim’s legs start to writhe underneath him; his windpipe’s not exactly designed to take the weight of his body, and he can feel himself choking, feet haywiring underneath him, desperate to find purchase.

“We should take him to Nero,” a Romulan by the door voices, uncertainly, and Jim watches the flick of annoyance across the other’s face.

“Yes,” he spits, “we should.”

He kicks Jim down to his knees; Jim kneels there, wheezing, staring up at the Romulan above him. The Romulan, pushed just that little bit too far, jams the phaser against his forehead and pulls the trigger – but it never hits him. By the time it’s left the barrel Jim’s flying across space in a million pieces, faster than light, and reassembling back in the belly of the _U.S.S. Enterprise._


	5. Chapter 5

Jim jams the crux of his hands into his eyes, his breath not coming fast enough; he wheezes desperately and drops down to his knees, the oxygen deprivation making him feel dizzy and his fingers tingle. “A little more quickly next time, lieutenant,” a voice warns, floating somewhere above his head, and the lieutenant mutters an apology in an undertone. He manages to peel his eyes open; there’s a Vulcan bending over him, his eyes rather sharp. “I am Acting Captain Spock, and I demand to know why you were – ”

 _Spock?_ Jim thinks, and snorts. “Bullshit,” he pants, and collapses.

 

 

Jim wakes up to the sight of a cell wall staring back at him. He stands, scours his hand across his face and stretches, yawning. The room’s an exact square, with enough space for Jim to take three paces across it, and its lighting comes from two dim electrostrips across the ceiling; it’s painted a dull, opaque grey, which absorbs more of the light than it reflects. Along the left-hand side there’s a bench a foot or so off the floor, more comfortable than it looks, and a sliding door at the back reveals a small toilet and a smaller sink. He uses the latter to splash a little water on his face and turns back into his cell, noticing for the first time a small switch beside the bathroom door; it activates an identical companion to his sleeping-bench, sliding noiselessly out of the opposite wall. The two nearly meet in the middle and make it impossible to move; Jim flicks the switch again, sending the second gliding back. Still, it makes him hopeful; it’s meant to be a two-man cell, at least, which means he might get some company.

His fingers suddenly jump up to his ear; his earpiece has gone. He absently wonders whether Bones is still on Delta Vega, or if he has any idea of where Jim is now.

His clothes have gone with his earpiece – something he’s grateful for, seeing as he’s been wearing them day-in-day-out for the best part of the last two weeks. The clothes he’s been dressed in (whilst being depressingly monochrome) are, _finally_ , comfortable, and his skin feels soft underneath them, the sign of a good wash. For some reason, the imagined memory of hot water makes him feel a whole lot more human, and he glances round the cell, invigorated. Jim quickly realises the door is impossible to find; he half-heartedly tracks his fingers across the walls, looking for a catch or crack in the stone, but gives up pretty quickly, slouching back on his bench/bed instead. There are still a few things irritating him, and he has the time to brood over them – for starters, how had Starfleet known where to find him? They must have tracked his transport from Delta Vega onto the Romulan ship – but Jim had no idea that kind of technology even existed. It must do, though, or Jim wouldn’t be sitting here, and would most probably have his brains all over a futuristic Vulcan wall.

That timing, he realises with a grin, was pretty damn close.

There is, however, a huge problem with that theory – if the technology’s available, why hadn’t the Romulans picked up their transportation as well? Especially seeing as they were meant to be from the freaking _future_ , where any of today’s tech would have been refined and improved a million times.

There is, though, a slightly more worrying problem – if Starfleet tracked Jim from Delta Vega to the Romulans, would they have gone from the Romulans to Delta Vega? Would they have found the others? Jim realises, suddenly feeling a little sick, that if anyone’s going to get disciplined over him jumping blindly into trouble, it’s not going to be him. And, unlike him, they have something to lose.

 _This is why_ , his mom reminds his pouting, six-year-old self, _you don’t leap before you look._

 

 

It’s dull, being in a cell, especially when its contents couldn’t entertain a bored toddler for more than three minutes; once Jim’s satisfied that his various wounds are bandaged properly he falls into a doze, slumping down on his sleeping-bench. It’s not an easy or a pleasant sleep, and he jerks awake more than once, gasping, as his – Bones’ – Cassie’s – his mom’s – head explodes all over the Vulcan ship, and the Romulan stands across him, smirking, and for some unknown reason buried in Jim’s psyche there’s a nineteenth-century pistol in his left hand, still smoking.

He’s awake when the door finally slides open, revealing itself to be casually hidden at the head of Jim’s bed. A sour-faced guard shoves someone inside, glares once at Jim and slams the cell door shut again, where it melds perfectly in with the wall. Jim’s barely had time to turn and register that it’s _Bones_ who was just inelegantly tossed into the room before he’s rounding on him, swinging a fist Jim has to crouch to his knees to avoid – then a roll to dodge a kick, sending him crashing dizzily into the opposite wall. He just about manages to get his forearms crossed defensively in front of him before Bones drags him up by his wrists, wrenches his hands down from in front of his face and stares at him, panting slightly.

He places his left hand on Jim’s neck and kisses him, hard.

Bones pushes Jim slightly into the wall, paces across the room and sits down on Jim’s bed, his breathing slowly returning to normal. His lip’s bleeding slightly, up in the left corner, and Jim can still taste it inside his mouth. “You bastard,” Bones mutters, glowering at him unabashedly. “I thought you were dead.”

“The Romulans took my mike,” Jim slowly explains, sinking down to sit on the floor. “And your guys must’ve found the earpiece.”

Bones picks irritably with a corner of his grubby cadet uniform, trying to scrape off some stubborn dirt. Apparently, they hadn’t been so kind as to give _him_ new clothes. “You were going to blow that damn ship to kingdom come, weren’t you? With you still inside.”

“It would have worked,” Jim replies, sounding a little sullen. Bones’ face contorts, livid, but he glares at the floor and doesn’t reply. Jim starts asking how long Bones has been here but the door slides open again – the guard’s back, still scowling, and he looks scornfully between the two of them before stopping on Jim.

“Kirk,” he snaps, and jabs a finger at him, in case Jim happens to have forgotten his last name. A pair of cuffs dangle ominously from his other hand. “The Captain wants to see you.”

It’s the first time he’s been inside a Starfleet ship – well, anything of this calibre, at least. The engineers seem to be proud of their work, and the name of the ship – the _U.S.S. Enterprise_ – is ingrained in the corner of every junction. The name’s familiar – _wait, that’s Chekov’s ship, right?_ Jim’s suddenly a little uneasy; it seems incredibly doubtful that this is a happy coincidence. Still, the ship itself sleekly done, everything white, silver and touch-sensitive, an aesthetically orgasmic revolution in technology. She must be brand new.

The guard leads him into a room to the left of the bridge, which Jim catches a glimpse of through a shutting door as they pass. The room’s small, dominated by a synth-wood desk mainly covered with PADDs and a large, sprawling computer monitor, set a half-inch deep into the surface. The Captain himself is sat in a chair on the other side, his fingers dancing across the screen, highlighting small boxes, minimising and maximising alternate windows. After releasing Jim from the cuffs the guard stands stodgily silent, waiting for an order; Jim quickly gets bored and clears his throat, rather loudly, earning himself a glare from the guard.

“Thank you, Matthews,” the Captain says, still apparently engrossed. “If you could close the door behind you?” He waits a moment, glares daggers at Jim and then slumps out; the door snaps loudly behind him. “You are Mr Kirk, are you not? Please, take a seat.”

“Yup, that’s me,” Jim replies, and drops himself in the chair opposite the Captain, grinning.

The Captain finally looks up, and _almost_ sighs. “Are you going to be flippant, Mr Kirk?”

Jim pretends to think for a moment. “Yeah,” he grins, finally. “I think I am.” He slouches back. “How do you know my name, anyway?”

“Cadet McCoy was kind enough to provide it for me.” The Captain leans back in his chair, and Jim half expects him to steeple his fingers; he settles with staring unnervingly at Jim in a way that’s weirdly familiar – “You appear to have failed to recognise the severity of your crimes.”

Jim’s grin widens. He’s had _years_ of practice at this; in his head he’s sat in the Principal’s office again, ready to charm himself out of the situation, avoiding a phonecall home. “To be honest, I don’t even know what we’ve done wrong.”

The Captain slowly raises his right hand, ticking off a finger in turn. “Ensign Chekov – theft of valuable equipment and disobeying a direct order. Lieutenant Commander Scott – harbouring a known fugitive – ”

Jim snorts; “Chekov? A _fugitive_?!”

“Cadet McCoy,” he continues, voice bland, “deliberately giving misleading information to a superior officer – ”

“ _What?!_ Wait, the guy who wanted to take us on Delta Vega? That was – ”

“And you, Mr Kirk.” He pauses, surveying him sharply. “Conspiring with him – not to mention the unauthorized use of valuable Starfleet equipment.” Jim’s brain’s going into overdrive, backtracking through the influx of information; if anything, all it’s done is confirm that the others have all been found and are also somewhere on board – probably the brig.

“That’s bullshit,” he concludes after a long while.

“Be that as it may,” the Captain continues unwaveringly, “you are still to be detained here until I receive further instructions from headquarters.” His head bows again, returning to the screen in front of him, leaving Jim to shift uneasily in his chair.

“Don’t you want to know what happened?”

“Ensign Chekov has provided a satisfactory account,” the Captain answers, still transfixed by his screen. _I bet he has_ , Jim thinks, a little bitterly. A moment later the Captain’s head rises again; “though, I would be interested to know what happened after you two parted ways.”

Jim shrugs. “I got on the ship, the Romulans found me, you beamed me out. That’s it, really. How did you do that, by the way?”

The Captain ignores the question, bowing his head to the screen. “If you have no more information you wish to share – ” He touches a button on the side of the screen, and a grille beside it bleeps softly. “Matthews, escort Mr Kirk back to the brig.” Behind Jim, the door clicks back open again, and Jim’s tugged to his feet, his hands clamped behind him. “The handcuffs are not necessary.” The guard gruffly lets Jim’s hands drop, manhandling him to the door.

“I was only trying to stop Nero,” Jim blurts, rather childishly, and the Captain looks up, one eyebrow raised.

“Yes – and the heroic mission you threw upon yourself appears to have been unsuccessful.” Jim supposes that’s probably as close to sarcasm as Vulcans can manage. “You have probably only managed to further infuriate a deeply disturbed individual – and, well, his subsequent actions can rest on _your_ conscience.”

The worm of guilt starts uncoiling in Jim’s stomach again. He makes to leave the room, but freezes by the door as something occurs to him, causing Matthews to crash painfully into his back. Ignoring the livid stare, Jim turns round to face the Captain again. “Your name,” he says, slowly, “it’s Spock, right?” He remembers hearing it when he first beamed on board, but he’d dismissed it as bad hearing brought on by oxygen deprivation.

“That is correct,” the Captain replies.

Jim hesitates. “Is it – common?”

“I believe I was the only one of my generation – ” He pauses. “Well, it is likely that I will be now. Now, please, Mr Kirk, I _am_ busy – Matthews, return him to the brig. Oh, and send in Lieutenant Sulu when you leave.”

He’s jostled back out of the door into the corridor – a bored-looking Asian man leaning against the opposite wall slinks in after and shuts the door behind him. The corridors are busier than before – probably a shift change, which would also explain Matthews’ eagerness to get him back in his cell. Inside the brig, Jim notices that the doors to each cell appear to be made of something not dissimilar to two-way glass, allowing him to see inside but, as he knows from experience, giving the impression of a solid stone wall from the other side. Chekov and Scotty occupy the first on the right; the two to his left are filled firstly with a huge green _thing_ with way too many tentacles and secondly with what looks like huge fluffy balls of wool. The cell between theirs and the others’ appears to be empty, but Jim notices that the security system is set to maximum and – though he could’ve imagined it – it looks like something’s shifting and flickering near the end wall.

Matthews grabs him roughly by the shoulders and shoves him into his cell, and he has to pirouette on his heel to avoid crashing into Bones, who was skulking by the door. Bones has activated the second bench, and Jim falls back on one as Bones settles on the other, looking across at him. “Did you find out anything different to me?”

Jim shrugs. “I didn’t find out anything,” he mutters.

Bones, for a minute, looks a little proud of himself. “He told me they’d been tailing Nero since the last time Starfleet got blown up – that’s how they spotted you beaming across, though God knows why the Romulans didn’t. It’s damn weird, if you ask me.”

Jim silently agrees. “You got the Captain back, though, right?”

Bones suddenly looks grim. “We got him back, sure enough, but he’s in a bad way – they attached some sucker slug or something to his spinal chord, probably leeching him for information. Nasty bastards, and in such a sensitive area – ” He cuts off, scowling. “I asked to help, seeing as I spent the last year studying the damn things – but apparently I’ve got all the authority of a fugitive stuck in here.”

Jim falters, thinking back to what Spock had said. “I did the right thing going to the ship, didn’t I?”

“No, Jim,” Bones sighs. “You did the wrong thing, the stupid thing – but it was the only thing we could do, and we did a damn sight better than Starfleet had managed to.”

Jim nods, staring absently at the floor. “You don’t think – Spock – the Captain here Spock – is the same Spock as the other Spock?”

The sentence, which had far too many uses of the word _Spock_ in, understandably takes Bones a moment to work out. Eventually, he nods and shrugs. “The way this whole thing’s so wrapped up in coincidence makes it unlikely not to be.”

“He’s an asshole,” Jim protests, and scowls at the way it comes out almost as a whine. “I can’t believe we’re meant to be friends.”

“You sound like my nine year old,” Bones replies, sounding bored, and Jim stares at the wall again.

 

 

Starfleet aren’t kind enough to equip them with a clock, so Jim has no idea how long he sleeps for, or even how long he’s been there. He wakes up bad-tempered and with a headache, which could mean too much or too little sleep, and he cups his hands, taking a messy drink from the sink in the back room. Bones is still sleeping quietly on the bench to the right of the bathroom, his face to the wall and his arm doubling up as a pillow – Jim slides back onto his own bench and sits crosslegged against the wall, watching him, his fingers tracing little patterns on his knee and resisting the urge to patter them on Bones’ side. It seems so stupid for them both to be sitting here – Nero’s still out there, still with the technology to destroy the freaking universe, and they’ve gone from being the only people who could stop him to skulking uselessly in the brig.

He hesitates, stretching his fingers out away from himself and closer to Bones, licking his lips. He keeps his eyes on the slope of Bones’ side, moving softly in time with his breathing. _I’ve known him for two weeks_ , he realises a little scornfully, and drops his hand. _Two weeks is not long enough to be freaking out over someone like this._

Two weeks is also not enough to stop it being awkward when Bones jerks awake to find Jim sprawled all over him, sent flying across the cell to slam his head painfully into the opposite wall and land pretty much on top of his cellmate. Jim opens his eyes, dazed, blinking hard to try and focus; he realises something huge has slammed into their cell door, leaving a curved dent cleaving through the centre, electrical smoke billowing angrily out of the top. They both scramble to separate, and Jim stands warily at the head of his bed, locking his legs for another sudden dive. “The ship’s been hit,” Bones mutters, rubbing his shoulder where Jim had crash-landed into him. “Did you feel it lurch? _That_ can’t be good.” Jim presses his ear to the sparking door; he can sort-of hear the sound of a klaxon coming from outside. He pushes his hand against it and it feels cold and sharp, closer to glass it is than the stone it’s meant to imitate. It’s thick, a slab of unrelenting metal, and probably impossible to shift; he tries to estimate the depth, the weight, but can only guess it’s probably way more than a fully-grown man’s meant to handle. He peels his hand away, flexing his fingers and rolling his shoulder.

There’s a sliver of space open in the corner – the door’s been so badly hit it’s warped, and if Jim puts his hand inside…

“Jim,” Bones says slowly, sliding off the bed. “What are you thinking?”

Ignoring him, Jim walks over, presses his hands into the gap and pulls. He nearly blacks out from the pain – not just from his stomach, crying out against the use of his torso muscles, but his elbows and wrists scream at him, threatening to pop out of their sockets. He absently hopes the glass is made of sterner stuff – the last thing he wants is a hand full of tiny splinters. In the corner of his eye he vaguely registers Bones charging across, yelling frantically, and then he lets go, staggering back, his arms trapped in the moment between agony and numbness, sending tingles all along his fingers. Even worse, a slow, wrenching pain is starting to come from his stomach – Jim touches it absently, thinking about tearing tissues and wounds that haven’t quite healed yet.

“You are sometimes the stupidest dumb fuck,” Bones mutters, and starts frisking his throbbing arms. “Does anywhere else hurt?”

Jim, neglecting to mention his stomach, shakes his head. “It worked, didn’t it?” he gasps, gesturing at the door; there’s a sliver of space open, enough for a child to squeeze through with ease – or a twenty-five year old man with difficulty. He just about manages to lever himself through, grins back through at Bones and walks into the brig. All of the other cells seem to be intact and, weirdly, unguarded – both of the guards Jim noticed before are nowhere to be seen. A large trolley – titanium, Jim reckons, or at least an alloy – has snapped from its brackets when the ship lurched, and careered down the length of the brig, smashing into their cell door. From the outside, cracks are darting and splitting the high-gloss surface; a hard punch would probably have the thing falling inwards in a shower of lethal shards. Bones extracts himself noisily from the cell through the tiny gap, cursing madly, and falls on his ass before worming his feet through and trying to look dignified; he ends up failing spectacularly when the ship lurches underneath them again, sending him crashing into Jim and they both stagger across the brig as the _Enterprise_ tries to right itself. The door to their cell slams shut with the deathly force of a guillotine, and Jim winces, thinking of Bones’ feet being stuck there, moments before.

“Well, there’s no point hanging around here,” Bones observes drily, pacing across the room to try the door out of the bridge; he plugs a security code in and it swishes open without hesitation. “Standard Starfleet emergency security code,” Bones explains, looking disgruntled. “Would’a thought they’d’ve reset the codes on a ship like _this_.”

The corridors are virtually empty; there’s a flashing red light pulsing from the overheads, and the klaxon ringing through the corridors is loud enough to wake the dead. The few people they meet are unconscious, strewn haphazardly across the floor; they spend a moment beside each at Bones’ insistence, checking they’re not suffering from anything worse than concussion. The crew, it turns out, is staring open-mouthed out of any viewport they can come across – they don’t pay Jim and Bones much attention when they happen down a corridor with a large, oblong window, surrounded by the crew gaping at the sight.

Jim doesn’t even need to look to know it’s Nero.

They retrace their footsteps to Spock’s office, simply because Jim reckons that in times of crisis the authority might actually do some good; it’s empty, and Jim plays with the terminus in his desk while Bones paces the room, muttering darkly to himself. “Wait a second,” Bones barks, frowning with his hands on his hips in the middle of the room. “If that’s the door we came through, where does _that_ one lead?”

Jim follows his finger, and his feet follow his look. He stands a little way back, frowning – “Bathroom, maybe?” he guesses, “storage closet?”

About as far from the truth as he could be; when Bones barges past him close enough to set off the motion-sensor it springs open to reveal the bridge. It’s pretty much a scene of general chaos; there’re at least three unconscious crewmembers strewn haphazardly across the floor, and the rest are following the general example and either flooding out in a panic or screaming useless orders. Bones moves from beside him instantly, checking the vitals of the nearest unconscious crewmember, leaving Jim to lean on a console and focus with mounting dread on the sight outside the viewscreen.

The last time he saw the Romulan ship this close, his planet got blown off the face of the map.

Spock enters; instant silence. He paces down the steps and settles himself in the Captain’s chair, looking curiously at Jim. “How did you escape the brig?”

“The door was open,” Jim explains, looking a little hurt. It’s a white lie at best, but his freedom’s hardly the most pressing problem. Bones straightens up, glances once at Spock and starts scanning the remaining bridge crew for casualties; he starts at the sight of a woman perched on a console almost right next to them, looking absently out at the Romulan ship. She catches the movement out of the corner of her eye and Jim watches her pass from shock to sheer happiness. “ _Leonard_ ,” she breathes, shaking her head and smiling. Jim frowns; she seems weirdly familiar. “I thought you were dead; so many of the others were – ”

“I’m not,” Bones replies, and gestures vaguely at Jim. “Thanks to him. Jim, this is – ”

“Uhura,” he finishes, supplying it with a lazy smile. “I never forget a pretty lady.”

Uhura’s face falls and her mouth snaps open, but her loyalty to her Captain overcomes her urge to smack Jim in the face. “Cadet,” Spock says, almost sounding bored. “I _am_ trying to contact engineering.”

“Yes, sir,” she replies, glaring at Jim. “Opening a line now.” The speaker on the left arm of Spock’s chair crackles loudly, and Jim winces at the static.

“Damage report?”

“Casualties on decks five and six, fatalities on seven - Captain, Doctor Puri is dead.”

Spock’s mouth tightens and he leans back in the chair. “And Nurse Chapel?”

“Unconscious, sir; she was with the doctor. We think she might be concussed.”

He nods. “Cadet McCoy shall be sent down as a replacement.” Bones, standing next to Jim, starts violently and protests even more so; Spock tries to silence him with a wave of his hand, but it’s Uhura that makes him shut up.

“Captain,” she calls, looking haggard. “We’re being hailed.”

“On screen.”

“I can’t go,” Bones whispers to Jim, his voice tight. “I’m not qualified!”

“You wanted to,” Jim hisses back. The screen’s jumping and flickering, trying to focus, shimmering a deep, nauseating green. “Don’t complain.”

“ _Jim_ – ” His voice cracks a little, and he shifts to the other foot. “Jim, what if someone dies?”

Jim doesn’t have time to answer, because the face of an angry Romulan is slowly materializing on screen. It flickers and jumps violently, covered by something pocked and green; the lens whirrs further back, revealing it to be a nervous Romulan’s forehead. Jim nearly laughs when he recognises him – it’s the Romulan he ambushed, and Jim doubts he’s pleased to see him still alive. “Captain Spock,” he begins, “the Captain requires your presen- ”

The Romulan is violently shoved to the side before he can finish, and a second fills the screen. He looks more haggard, more cruel, and he’s never quite still, constantly twitching and writhing. There are marks beneath his eyes that are dark even for a Romulan, and Jim guesses he’s not getting much sleep. “Spock?” he rasps, glaring malevolently into the camera. Jim resists the urge to roll his eyes; he’s clearly into amateur dramatics. “I want you _dead_ , Spock…”

Spock, undaunted, does nothing but lean back in his chair and quirk a single eyebrow. “I am prepared to consider your terms if you are willing to – ”

The Romulan – who, by his incredible powers of logic, Jim guesses to be Nero – takes it badly. He lunges wildly at the screen, screaming, and there are a few moments of static-drenched screen, accompanied by shouts and loud crashes before the first Romulan’s head flickers into focus, attempting and failing to keep his composure. He continues in rehearsed, staccato sentences; “You are to send Spock alone inside an unoccupied shuttle over to this ship. Failure to do so will result in the destruction of the _Enterprise_. You have thirty minutes to comply.”

The screen unobtrusively fades to black. Uhura presses a button, and the Romulan ship is displayed on the screen once more. Spock stands.

“This is stupid,” Jim pronounces, glaring at Spock in disbelief. “You can’t seriously consider going over there – he’ll kill you, and then he’ll kill all of us anyway!”

“You’ve got to hand it to him, that is the likely course of action, sir,” the lieutenant in the pilot’s seat agrees – Sulu, Jim remembers, waiting to come in when Jim had left the Captain’s office before.

“Perhaps in a rational being, I’d agree,” Spock replies, fiddling with the console to Sulu’s right. “Nero, however, appears to be driven solely by vengeance which for some inexplicable reason centres around me, and it is therefore logical to presume that once I have been removed from the equation his pathological desires will be complete.”

Jim snorts. “You just said that Nero’s anything but logical – using a damn _presumption_ on him makes no sense!”

Spock decides to simply ignore him. “Cadet Uhura, accompany Cadet McCoy to the medbay – the nurses should know what to do with him there. Mr Kirk is to be returned to the brig – Mr Sulu, you have the conn.”

There are a few hectic attempts to argue with him, not just by Jim – and then he steps into the elevator and is gone. Moments later, they watch the shuttle launch and sleekly glide its way over to the Romulans’ ship.

Sulu straightens his back, trying to look firm; Jim can see his fists trembling. He’s standing awkwardly in the middle, looking nervously at the empty captain’s chair every now and then. “Ensign Mulroy, take Kirk back to the brig. Uhura – McCoy to medbay, like the captain said.” Jim had associated _Ensign_ with _tiny_ ; he gets quite a shock when a six-foot burly officer starts manhandling him out of the brig. He catches Bones’ eye once more, standing at the other end with Uhura’s hand resting on his arm; Bones tries desperately to mouth something to him but Jim’s out in the corridor, staring at the closed metal door.

“This way,” the Ensign grunts, prodding Jim in the back, and they tramp away down the corridor, each step taking him further and further from the bridge. The corridors are even more deserted than before; occasionally they pass through a room filled with whispering, terrified people, but the Ensign doesn’t walk slowly enough for him to catch the conversation. They step into an empty elevator and Jim makes his move.

“Fuck this,” he mutters, and punches the Ensign in the face. He crumples to the floor with a crack.

The corridor leading to the brig is empty; Jim wrenches the grille off a service tube, drags the snoring Ensign out of the elevator and shoves him inside. With a furtive glance back into the elevator, Jim breaks off in a run.

Jim enters the brig, fists raised; it’s still completely unguarded, the guards’ desertion undetected – which, in Jim’s opinion, is a _major_ oversight, and would not happen on _his_ ship. He stands by the terminus, fingers flying across the screen; a pulsing red box with _Authorisation Code_ flickers up and Jim swears, slapping the side. He should’ve got Bones to give him that damn code. He licks his lips, leans against the console and stares at the screen. _Come on, Jim, you’re smarter than this._ He hacked into Interpol almost before he could read.

He closes his eyes and starts to type.

_access denied_

_access denied_

_access denied –_

_access granted_ , rimmed in a healthy, happy green. _Are you sure you want to open the door?_

Jim grins and presses _yes_.

Scotty and Chekov stare at him. “A word of advice,” he tells Chekov cheerily as he helps them out of the cell. “You _really_ need to update your security system.”

“I take it you have a plan?” Scotty wheezes as they run through the corridors back to the elevator.

Jim shrugs. “Generally, I just make it up as I go along.” He presses the button labelled _transporter room_.

This, unfortunately, is not unguarded, but it is understaffed – Jim takes out the two by the console and, surprisingly, it’s Chekov and not Scotty who takes out the one he doesn’t see, creeping up behind him with a hypospray full of clear sedative. Scotty eyes up the console warily, glancing once at Jim. “Why do I know what you’re going to say before you even say it?”

Jim takes the steps two at a time and settles on the pad, staring back down at Scotty. “I can do it this time,” he murmurs, his fingers flexing. “I know I can.”

“Incredible thing, déjà vu,” Scotty mutters, and starts plugging the coordinates into the terminal. Outside, a loud, angry klaxon sounds, accompanied again by the flashing lights.

“Security breach located,” the console informs them coolly. “Emergency lockdown in sixty, fifty-nine – ”

“Shit,” Jim hisses, glancing out of the door. “Scotty, how’s it coming?”

“Nearly there!” he yells over _forty-five, forty-four_ , powering desperately.

Chekov suddenly jumps, running up to join Jim on the pad. “Kid, you can’t come – ”

“I don’t want to,” Chekov replies testily, fiddling with something on his belt. “You don’t have a communicator – here, take this.” He presses a black oval of metal into Jim’s hand. “Emergency locator. Press the button on the side to beam out you and anyone you’re holding.”

“Thanks,” Jim mutters, pocketing it. _Twenty-four, twenty-three_.

“Done!” Scotty shouts, slapping the terminus; Chekov skips off and hovers beside him. “Clear the pad, energising – ”

“Jim!” Bones barks, and Jim starts, glancing wildly around for him. The voice is coming from a grille beside Scotty’s hand, and Scotty snaps it back as if stung, staring openmouthed. “Jim, that’s you, isn’t it? Of course it’s you, nobody else would be damn stupid enough to send the whole ship into emergency lockdown. I knew from the second the alarms went off – look, for God’s sake, don’t do anything _stupid_ – ” _Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen._

“Scotty,” Jim yells, “energise!”

“ _No_ ,” Bones shouts, “Scotty, _don’t_ – ”

“SCOTTY!”

_Five, four, three._

Scotty hits the button and Jim’s gone.

There’s a nasty, chemical smell in his nose when he materialises; he tries to breathe shallowly and looks around, darting out of the door. It’s not a part of the ship he’s been in before, which is entirely possible, considering how big the damn thing is – he starts trying every door he can find, looking for something, _anything_ he can use to defend himself. A loud, angry klaxon starts ringing – he doesn’t understand the words that follow it, but it’s pretty safe to guess they’re not to welcome him on board. He hides in the Romulan equivalent of a broom cupboard to escape from a couple of patrols and then breaks into a run down the corridor, ignoring stealth for speed.

The first corridor he tries is a dead end; the second takes him back where he’s started; the third nearly dumps him prematurely in the brig. He regrets not having Chekov with him, and absently thumbs the oval in his pocket, smooth against his fingers. He has to work this out before the Romulan ship goes to warp – Scotty might have a lock on the ship, but his trans-warp beaming equation, complete with three years of research, is sat on the hard drive of a terminal at Delta Vega, lightyears away. Besides, he didn’t know for sure if the locator would even work if they went to warp. He might never get back – him or Spock.

 _Focus, Jim_. If he finds his way to another map, he can probably remember the Romulan character indicating the Vulcan ship and work out a way there – then it’s just a matter of getting himself caught. The thing is, phase one has to happen before phase two – which is a lot easier said than done. Still, hiding in Romulan broom cupboards is going to get him nowhere.

He grits his teeth and steps into the corridor.

Three corridors over and two _very_ close shaves later, Jim’s staring at a map, scanning it hopelessly. It looks nothing like the one they saw before, and, even worse, Jim can’t find the symbol he knows anywhere. He scans it again, hoping it’ll just dissolve and rematerialise as a big arrow telling him to Go This Way – footsteps at the end of the corridor announce his third close shave and he darts into an alcove, barely hidden by sparking wires and tubes. He’s close enough to hear their conversation – they’re speaking Standard, and Jim strains his ears to hear. “Commander Ayel,” the younger one squeaks with an annoying amount of awe.

“Prepare the Red Matter,” Ayel murmurs back – Jim recognises the voice as the same Romulan he had the pleasure of being shot at from before. He seems to do a hell of a lot on this ship. “Nero wants the _Enterprise_ destroyed before he kills Spock. He ordered me to do it, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this intruder – I’m going to join the security teams sweeping the lower decks. Quickly!” He barks the last part and sweeps regally away; moments later, the younger scuttles past his hiding place. Jim squirms out of the gap and follows.

Unfortunately, the hangar is a literal hive of activity, the Romulans swarming around the arcane ship from every angle. Jim manages to dodge through the closing doors and hide in an alcove to the side – he notices he’s on the opposite side of the Vulcan ship from before, and he has to back a lot further into this alcove to avoid being seen. He falls spectacularly over a crate and lands on the floor, quickly slamming out an arm to take the weight and stop it crashing onto the floor; his forearm explodes with pain and he bites a lip to stop himself screaming. Whatever’s in it, it’s fucking _heavy_.

As he rights it he frowns – there’s a Starfleet logo peeking out of a flap. He pulls it open to peer inside, and nearly laughs. It’s full of old three-sixties – nicknamed Flashers because of the flare they give before they go off. Half nitroglycerin, half TNT and outlawed half a century ago. A small strip of magnesium sits above a container of oxygen connected with the explosives; when the timer gives out the magnesium falls into the oxygen, and the resulting reaction ignites the rest. Big explosion, very messy, very hard to control – especially seeing as the clingfilm-style layer separating the magnesium and the oxygen tends to rupture before the timer goes. God knows why the Romulans have them, but they suit Jim’s purposes nicely; he slips one out of the box and hugs it close to his side, plugging in the timer.

Now comes the tricky bit – he has to get over to the ship, plant the bomb and somehow get to the other entrance and make it look like he hasn’t been here all along. He waits for a gap in the guards and hotfoots it over to hide under the shuttle; he finds an access panel underneath in the Romulans’ blindspot and slides the bomb inside, hitting the big shiny activate button. He has fifteen minutes to find Spock and get them both out of there without the Romulans suspecting a thing.

One of the younger Romulans is struggling with a huge crate of what looks like phasers – he drops it and it explodes, sending a phaser beam ricocheting around the hanger, passing so close to Jim’s hiding place he feels the heat across his face. His superiors erupt in anger, shouting and screaming at him; the rest, momentarily distracted, start muttering and laughing. It gives Jim just what he needs and he pelts across to the nearest door, skidding through just as it shuts behind him.

Jim smiles. Here’s where the fun begins.

Giving them a moment to calm down and get back on their guard, Jim presses the release button and swaggers, in full view, into the centre of the Romulan guards. They’re on him in a moment – he puts up a pretty good show of looking surprised and struggles feebly, but they jam his hands behind his back and knee him in the stomach for good measure, and he chokes with the pain. When his ears stop ringing he hears them barking into their communicators; by the time he’s pretty much regained the ability to breathe the one pinning his arms smacks him round the head, grinning vindictively. “You’re going to the Captain,” he murmurs, eyes glittering with a mixture of glee and malice.

 _Perfect_ , Jim thinks. “No, don’t do – ” He struggles again, going limp as they tug him to his feet. _Maybe I’m overdoing it_ , he muses, but the guards seem pretty convinced; there’s a blindfold strapped round his head and he’s led, stumbling every now and then for effect, through the ship and onto the bridge.

The blindfold being whipped off doesn’t have the effect it should; the light’s so dim on the ship there’s no glare to put him off-balance or disorientate him to the proper psychological effect. He glances around, trying to take in as much as he can; Nero’s standing with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the _Enterprise_. The occasional Romulan subordinate scurries across the consoles, refining the data and refocusing the image; Ayel, looking furious, stands at Nero’s right; Spock is slumped at his feet, looking almost as angry. He looks a little paler than usual, and there’s a smear of green blood across his bright blue shirt. “The intruder, Captain Nero,” his escort murmurs, bowing reverently. Ayel nods and the Romulan retreats; the former tugs Spock to his feet and pushes him over to stand beside Jim.

“I’d ask you what you are doing here,” Spock murmurs as he turns to face Nero, “but it seems likely you’d lie.”

“We have to get off the ship,” Jim hisses, eyeing up Nero and Ayel.

“Why?”

“Because there’s a bomb in the cargo bay.”

Spock stares at him.

“Who is it?” Nero rasps, turning on his heel to stare malevolently at Jim.

“Jim Kirk,” he calls, waving with a cheeky smile. “It’s great to finally meet you.”

“Jim Kirk,” Nero repeats, staring at him blankly. “The son of the famous George. You’re very like your father.” Jim grits his teeth and says nothing. “I didn’t realise you were under Starfleet’s command.” Nero watches Spock carefully, but trying to guess an emotion from a Vulcan is like having a staring contest with a rattlesnake. He sighs, just slightly, and gestures. “Ayel.”

His second in command marches forwards, looking menacing – “I’m not,” Jim says, figuring out the veiled threat at the last moment. “I’m not part of Starfleet. I hijacked my way here.”

“You’ve got a habit of doing that,” Ayel sneers, his hands tightening menacingly. “You like dancing around our ship, don’t you?”

Jim shrugs. “Not my fault you’ve not got the technology to track me.”

Ayel’s mouth clamps tight. “We did,” he mutters, “but somebody _broke_ it.” Jim grins. A first lucky break.

“How long before the bomb activates?” Spock murmurs. Jim thinks hard; he’s tried to keep hold of the time, but it’s hard without a clock.

“Five minutes?” he whispers back. “Maybe more, maybe less.”

“Captain, the Red Matter will be primed in one minute,” the console informs Nero, and he swaggers over to it, pushing a button.

“Program in the coordinates and prepare to clear the singularity,” he replies, occupying himself with the terminal.

“He’s clearly lost his mind,” Spock mutters, shifting to talk to Jim a little easier. “He believes he is from the future and that I destroyed his planet – Jim, he’s trying to destroy the Federation.” It’s an unwelcome confirmation of the other Spock’s story. “That is why he destroyed Earth.”

Jim fingers the locator in his pocket, palms it and worms it through his fingers into Spock’s. He can’t help but hope it doesn’t look like they’re holding hands. “A locator,” Spock confirms without looking down. “Clever.”

“Use it to get back to the _Enterprise_ ,” Jim mutters. “Warp away from here – ”

“Too late,” interrupts Spock. “By the time I get to the bridge Nero will have launched the Red Matter.”

“You get back to the ship,” Jim hisses. “Let me deal with Nero.”

Spock pauses. “There’s no way the transporter will lock onto you before the bomb is activated. You’ll be trapped here.”

It’s funny, Jim decides, that the first person that he thinks of is Bones. “I know.”

“Red Matter primed,” Ayel declares. “Waiting on your signal, Captain.”

Nero paces over to them, looking from one to the other. “You’re going to watch,” he rasps, and lurches away back to the console to press the button. At that moment, Jim lunges for him, catching him round the middle and sending them slamming to the floor. Nero roars, twisting violently out of his arms and kicking at his head; flipped onto his back, Jim watches Spock calmly fight with Ayel, disarming him with the sharp snap of a breaking wrist and then pinching his neck, sending him falling to the floor. Then Nero’s on top of him again, blocking his sight and pummelling his fists into him as quickly as he can; a wayward one successfully slams into his stomach and Jim cries out, his whole body convulsing with pain. At this rate it’ll be a miracle if that damn wound _ever_ heals. Nero writhes free and dives for the console again; Spock’s there to stop him but gets shoved aside by a single lucky blow to his head and he staggers before falling to lie sprawled on the floor by Jim’s feet. Jim wraps his hands round Nero’s ankles and wrenches him from his feet; they roll closer to the edge of the platform, sliding on the smooth metal. _How much longer before the bomb goes off?_ Jim thinks, desperately; _it can’t be more than a couple of minutes now –_

Nero’s sliding off the edge of the platform; Jim’s chest surges with victory but the feeling’s premature – Nero makes a wild, final grab at Jim and catches hold of his ankle, dragging him off with him. Spock lunges for them, grabbing hold of Jim’s arm with one hand and fumbling with his other to get the locator – Jim’s slipping out of his fingers, and Nero’s clawing his way up his leg, pulling him further and further down – Jim suddenly realises that if Nero’s still holding on when they beam he’ll come back onto the _Enterprise_ with them and he’ll be saved.

With a hard, strong kick, Jim connects with Nero’s head; Nero’s grip fails and he falls; Spock’s fingers connect with the locator and, seconds later, they dissolve into two flashes of light and disappear.

They land painfully back on the _Enterprise_ , slamming into the pad strong enough to wind him. The room, filled with angry-looking officers, erupts at the sight of Spock, tugging him up and onto his feet; Bones picks up Jim instead and starts checking him over. Jim slips out of his fingers and starts running full-pelt for the door, shoving past the guards; over his heartbeat and his squeaking footsteps he can hear Spock barking orders as he runs close behind. He hurtles into the bridge and skids to a halt in front of the viewscreen, staring at the Romulan ship, half of the _Enterprise_ ’s security forces hotfooting behind. They try to wrestle Jim to the floor, cuffs at the ready, but Spock shakes his head and waves them away. Bones, just about catching up, jogs beside him, wheezing slightly, and throws him a filthy look; he starts prodding and pressing along his arms and legs to check for damage. Jim tugs him up and soundlessly points across to the ship.

It explodes.

The whole bridge room is staring at Jim. “Where the devil did you learn to do that?” Bones asks, staring in wonder.

Jim shrugs, grinning. “I had a troubled childhood.”

Once the smoke and debris floats away, Jim’s surprised to see it’s still looking remarkably intact – but the bomb wasn’t the weapon. The real thing’s yet to come.

“Captain,” Sulu suddenly says as he settles down in front of his haywiring, screeching console. “The gravitational readings – ”

“You ignited the Red Matter,” Bones realises. “You clever son of a bitch.” Jim simply smiles.

Uhura stands; she steps down to rest beside Bones and stares out at the ship, the first signs of the singularity peeking out around its far end. The picture is silent, but Jim imagines the shrieking, rendering metal, sucked into somewhere endless, soundless. Jim feels nothing but bitter victory; Uhura’s face is twisted slightly, and Jim hopes it’s not from remorse. “Shouldn’t we… help?”

“No,” Jim says, staring forward.

Bones looks at him. “Jim… Nero’s not the only Romulan on that ship.”

 _He killed my mother, Bones_ , Jim thinks, but he says nothing.

“Establishing communication link,” Uhura says neatly, having paced to the nearest console, and ignores the glare Jim sends her. “Receiving a reply.”

Ayel’s face is the one on the screen, and not Nero’s; Jim wonders how far in that cavernous ship he fell, and how badly Jim hurt him. “Narada,” Spock declares, staring stoically into the view screen; his hands are clasped behind him, every inch the gracious host. “This is Spock, Acting Captain of the _U.S.S. Enterprise_. We have determined that you are too close to the singularity to survive without assistance – ” Spock glances across at Jim, who stares back stolidly. “ – which we are willing to provide.” Jim feels his fingers clench up.

Ayel, fortunately, does his job for him, and spits at the screen and terminates the link.

“See?” Jim mutters, staring back out at the Narada. “You just can’t help some people.”

Uhura, tight-mouthed, glares at Jim. “So we just watch as they all die?”

“Pretty much,” he replies, still staring forward. “We did all we could.”

“Sounds like bureaucratic bullshit to me,” she mutters; nobody takes her up on it. Jim silently wonders how many of them agree.

The black hole on screen is stretching, its mouth yawing through the helpless space and happily sucking the Narada down into it. For a moment Jim wonders what it must be like over there – the younger Romulans panicking, the older too shocked to do anything but stare.

He says nothing. He’s worse than homeless, orphaned and it’s because of them.

The moment the ship is fully destroyed is as unremarkable as Earth had been; it was there and now it’s not. Jim absently thinks that it’s over – then he dismisses it. The Romulans destroyed his planet, and that’s something that can never really be over.

The ship lurches suddenly under his feet; Jim catches himself on a console, and Spock skips light-footedly up to the Captain’s chair, pressing the comms button. “Mr Sulu, manoeuvre us to a safe position. Mr Scott, are we ready to go to warp?”

“Aye, Captain,” Scotty chimes over the comms, sounding remarkably chipper. “Awaiting your order.”

There’s a happy-sounding electronic noise from Sulu’s console. “We’re outside the gravity field, Captain, but it keeps expanding – it would probably be better not to try and stay near it for long.”

Spock shakes his head. “We should attempt to monitor the singularity to ensure it doesn’t damage any of the nearby systems. Ensure we remain at a safe distance and monitor any fluctuations closely.”

Spock starts to sound off reports to all areas of the ship; Bones takes the opportunity to grab Jim’s arm and starts what promises to be a long lecture, gripping roughly. “I can’t believe you went over to the ship again,” he mutters, glaring. “It’s a goddamn miracle you’re alive at all.”

Jim diplomatically decides not to tell him he had planned to be on the ship when it blew up. “I knew what I was doing,” he shrugs, grinning. “And it worked, right?” It’s not much of a comfort; it’s not exactly the first time he’s said it.

Bones snorts. “Just about.”

Behind him, Spock raises an eyebrow. “Mr Kirk, would you like to explain why there’s an unconscious Ensign in a service tube on deck seven?”


	6. Chapter 6

They don’t, thankfully, have to spend any more time in the brig. Their cell door is pretty much destroyed – notwithstanding the fact Jim just managed to save the Federation, not to mention the universe. He and Bones are allocated a shared quarters on the lower decks; Chekov is allowed back to his own quarters; Scotty is given his own little cabin, though Jim suspects he spends most of his time sleeping down in the Engine room anyway. Jim (maturely) calls first pick of the beds, throwing himself on the one by the window, grinning as he splays himself star-shaped across the mattress. His toddler’s-mind soon becomes distracted by the replicator in the wall – “Awesome,” he breathes, jumping over to it and staring at it in wonder. “It’s like room service we don’t even have to pay for!”

“Be careful of that,” Bones mutters, perching on the end of his bed. “Most of the time it tastes like crap.”

Jim nevertheless orders the biggest, most unhealthy thing he can think of and sits on his bed, chomping noisily. He wipes his hands on his trousers when he’s done and looks around the room; they’re lucky enough to have a window, though it only really shows a square of ebony-black. “Do you think this is a dead person’s room?” he murmurs, softly, still staring out of the window.

“To be honest, I don’t want to think about it,” Bones replies drily. “It’s a damn good thing I’m allowed to go to the medbay; I don’t think I can stand being cooped up here all day.”

“With me?” Jim croons; Bones snorts.

“ _Especially_ with you.”

Jim throws a hunk of plastic at him from his food tray and settles back against the bed, still staring out of the window. Starfleet has set up a temporary emergency HQ on Risa and Spock had been in contact with them earlier in the afternoon – Jim and Bones were to be held there, _awaiting official judgement of their actions_. Apparently, most of the shit Jim had done to save the universe was illegal, which just sort of summed up the situation pretty damn well. The Admirals were due to hold his and Bones’ (postponed) tribunal separately the following week; until then they were to be kept in isolation in their assigned quarters on the _Enterprise_. Spock had casually waived the last part, giving them the freedom to roam the ship at will – it wasn’t like either of them had anywhere to run to, not anymore.

 

 

Jim spends most of the week just wandering around the ship. _His_ ship, or at least that’s how the other Spock would have him see it – Jim wonders whether it looks any different from the ship he was meant to Captain in this other universe of his. With Nero dead and no way for Jim to verify Spock’s story, he has the option of rejecting the whole idea as insanity or accepting it as the truth – the first is more logical, but the second gives him more answers, not to mention more peace of mind.

He pretty much knows every inch of it by the time he’s done; Scotty’s happy to tour him round engineering, having allocated himself Chief, and Jim knows a hell of a lot more about that area than he ever wanted to. Uhura begrudgingly shows him their species’ databases and he impresses her with his rudimentary Orion; Chekov enthusiastically tries (and fails) to explain the diversities of their warp accelerator; Sulu kicks his ass at fencing and takes him for drinks in the canteen afterwards. Spock occasionally takes him to the side and describes a minor conundrum to him, asking casually for advice; sometimes he stands with him on the observation deck and doesn’t say much at all, which suits Jim just fine. He wiles away more than a few happy hours sitting on a biobed, asking Bones loud, personal and above all annoying questions; half the time he’s fervently ignored and the other half he’s yelled at and more than once he’s subjected to violent beating, anaesthetics and hyposprays full of vaccines he’s damn sure he doesn’t need. Bones also nearly kicks him three ways from Sunday over the state his stomach wound’s in – the tissue damage and apparent haemorrhage are serious but not serious enough for Bones to deal with without yelling at him constantly. “Anyone else,” he mutters, strapping up Jim’s stomach, “I’d prescribe prolonged bed rest, but I know you’re not going to give a damn what I say anyway.” His tone’s vicious but his hands are steady and soft – he’s a much better doctor than he gives himself credit. “Now, for the love of God, stop bothering me!”

The Admirals land five days after Jim destroyed the Romulan ship. He’s kicking up proverbial dust on the observation deck, trying to think of an intellectual response to Spock’s latest staffing problem when he spots the little silver flash as the shuttle smoothly leaves warp; it hovers for a second, obviously waiting for the _Enterprise_ to verify their codes or something and not blow them halfway to hell. It sails smoothly into the docking port, and there’s only one thing it could be; Jim sprints down to medbay and skids to a halt in front of Bones. “Just in time,” Bones grunts, loading up a nasty-looking vial. “I was hoping to test this out on someone.”

“The Admirals are here,” he wheezes, leaning on his legs slightly, ears throbbing from the run. “I just saw them dock in.”

To the casual observer, Bones remains undaunted; Jim’s far from a casual observer, and he notices the way Bones’ fingers falter and, if possible, his skin tinges slightly white. “Well they can damn well come find me,” he mutters darkly, and pushes past Jim. “I’ve got no problem with _them_.”

It’s Spock that tracks them down, and Spock that acts as a middleman; the Admirals themselves apparently had a _tiring journey_ , and have retired until the following morning. “They are going to deal with Cadet McCoy’s tribunal before your own, Mr Kirk, seeing as his has been forthcoming for some time.” When in non-life-threatening situations, Spock seems to find it necessary to address him by his last name. Bones shrugs; it’s debateable whether it’s worse one way or the other. “I understand they plan to debate the issue between themselves before calling on you as a witness – naturally, there are no surviving members from the medical team you worked with at the time.” The fact six billion people died (twelve, if you count Vulcan; more, if you count Tyrellia and Starfleet’s later losses) seems to have become a _natural_ fact for everybody these days.

Bones lays his cleaned cadet uniform out on his bed, freshly starched for the morning, a red bloodstain spread-eagled across the crisp white sheets. Jim stands behind him, trailing a single hand up and down the base of his spine. “You’ll be fine,” he murmurs. “In light of everything you’ve done they _have_ to let you go.”

“I sure hope so,” Bones sighs, kneading an eye with his hand. Jim’s fingers accidentally ride up the back of his shirt and he starts as they catch on his skin. “Jim, I don’t – ”

“I was wondering which one it was going to be,” Jim murmurs, nipping slightly at his neck. “The ex-wife, the daughter, the tribunal. There’s a kid’s story no one’d want to read.”

Bones grits his teeth and swallows a whine. “Jesus, Jim, I just don’t see why it’s the right – ”

“You’ve been dancing around me all week,” he mutters, and slides his hand a little further up Bones’ spine, pushing under his shirt.

“Now you’re imagining things,” Bones gasps, and his head falls back on Jim’s shoulder. “Just promise me this isn’t a ‘last-night-of-freedom’ kind of thing.”

“I don’t sleep with many convicts; it puts an edge on things.” He dodges Bones’ wayward hand and catches it by the wrist, nipping just above where his fingers curl around. “It’s a ‘three-weeks-of-UST’ kind of thing. Besides, you were the one that kissed me first.”

“I should’ve known that would bite me in the ass,” Bones grumbles, and turns round to face him, shivering as his shirt slides back down. “I was sat on that goddamn planet and I thought ‘Leonard, if you ever see that bastard again – ’ ”

Jim grins. “You’d punch me then make out with me? How poetic.” He leans in to bite Bones’ neck, nipping softly just below his jawline.

Bones sighs and tilts his head back, writhing a little. “I thought you were dead.”

“You just found me irresistible,” he murmurs, and because James Kirk always has the last word, kisses him.

He has a little more time to do it than before, and he takes advantage, sprawling a hand across Bones’ chest and leaning in. He uses his fingers to tug Bones’ shirt over his head; he gets little protest from Bones and his chest is a hot shock against Jim’s cold fingers. Bones hisses, and idly Jim wonders if it’s from the feeling or the cold. “S’hardly fair,” Bones murmurs, “me standing here half naked and you still dressed – ” Jim tugs off his own shirt to prevent an argument and Bones sighs as Jim leans in to nip at his neck, trailing his fingers along Bones’ spine. “ _Please_ tell me you locked the door,” he grumbles, and Jim pulls back far enough to roll his eyes.

“I’m not an idiot,” he mutters. “At least not where sex is concerned.”

“God help me,” Bones replies, and Jim shoves him back towards his bed; Bones catches his footing at the last moment and grabs onto Jim wildly, just about managing to stay upright. “We are _not_ fucking on my uniform,” he snaps, looking stupidly bitchy, and Jim silently drags him over to the other one, shoving him down. He shuffles out of his pants and underwear and Bones does the same – the disadvantage of being the one lying on the bed means he takes a little longer, and Jim watches him slide and wriggle across the surface, material bunching all around his shoulders. “Dear God,” Bones grunts; Jim stares at his fingers, still working on getting his pants over his thighs. “You’re an exhibitionist. I should’ve known.”

“Not really,” Jim murmurs, and pulls Bones’ clothes away before straddling him casually. “I just wanted to watch.” He leans down just as Bones reaches up; he kisses him a little more strongly, a little less longingly, beginning to shimmy his hips across Bones’ stomach. Underneath him, Bones’ hips echo his movement, and Bones sits upright to kiss him properly. “Fuck _me_ ,” Jim whines, his back arcing and his head snapping back, happy tingles of pleasure shooting down into his fingertips.

Bones hesitates. “Is that a demand or an exclamation?”

Jim groans, shunting his hips a little harder. “Mixture of the both.”

Bones freezes. “Seriously?”

Jim stops moving, quirking an eyebrow down at him. “What, you think I’ve never done this before?”

“Point taken.” Bones’ fingers meander over his skin, cold and soft, and Jim writhes a little, wanting them to move faster. “Damn, you’re eager for this, aren’t you?” Jim doesn’t need to reply; he groans obscenely instead, his fingers clenching in the bed sheet either side of him. Bones’ fingers rest at the base of Jim’s spine, and he pauses, glancing up at his face; Jim’s eyes are closed and he’s panting shallowly. “Shouldn’t I – ?”

“ _Jesus_ , Bones, do it already!” Jim wheezes, and there’s not much he can do to argue with that. He slicks his fingers in the vial on the bedside (probably appropriated from his own damn medical supplies), slips two down to meet his ass and buries his face in the crux of Jim’s neck as he slides them inside; he feels Jim’s chest hitch against his own but he can’t see his face to know if it’s from pleasure or pain or even a mixture of the both. He lets out a high, satisfied whine and Bones deigns it alright to move his fingers; he wriggles them further inside, and he has to admit the thought of something this tight and hot around him does all sorts of miraculous things to his hard-on. For a trained doctor – if not a qualified one – the prostate’s pretty damn easy to find, and he makes sure he locks eyes with Jim when he rubs against it, just to watch him shudder and fall apart under his hands. The effect sort of winds him, and it’s somehow a lot more perversely beautiful than it should be.

“Wait,” Bones rasps, “you – on the bed – ” They shuffle around each other for a moment, rearranging awkwardly to leave Jim sprawled on the bottom and Bones perching tentatively on the top. “Jim,” he whispers, and the other opens his eyes, watching Bones, half-irritated, half endeared. Jim makes the decision for him, hooking one leg haphazardly around his waist and pushing his hips up; Bones slides further down and watches Jim’s eyes as he pushes inside. The world promptly slams shut around them, reserved for Jim and maybe only the tiny part of himself that just wants to come. It’s Jim that makes the first move, fucking himself eagerly, and Bones groans; his fingers wrap and slide on Jim’s sweaty waist, leaning forward to kiss him again, tasting blood, strong, tangy and heady. Jim whines, long and high, and spreads his legs further, just encouraging him; Bones takes him up on the offer and slams forwards, shuddering as everything explodes and fries his nerves. Jim cautiously twists his hips up again, his legs writhing with the pleasure, and Bones chokes out a moan and buries his face into Jim’s neck.

They don’t fuck as much as helplessly rut against each other; Jim won’t let go long enough to let Bones sit back and fuck him harder. Jim’s head lolls to the side and he groans and gibbers as the angle changes. “Again,” he gasps, his fingers scrabbling on Bones’ back, and Bones wonders for a moment about making him beg – then he succumbs and slides his hips forwards, hard, and Jim dies underneath him, shuddering till he’s bunched entirely still and then exploding with movement as he comes, the world whiting out around him to hot, happy pleasure. Bones takes advantage of his momentary distraction and fucks him hard and fast, joining him breathlessly minutes later.

Jim’s still trembling slightly; Bones can already feel himself falling asleep, regardless of the filth they’re sprawled in. He shifts a little, tugging himself out of Jim, and only really succeeds in cementing himself further in the mess. He grimaces. _To hell with it, Leonard_ , he tells himself sternly. _For once in your life live a little._

He blacks out.

 

 

Jim ruffles Bones’ hair casually to wake him, water still trickling off his fingers from the shower. “Wake up,” he murmurs, and Bones groans below him, feeling sordid and sticky. “It’s the big day. I’m going to the canteen to smuggle you breakfast.” He has the common decency to allow Bones the time to shower and dress on his own; he reckons Bones is hardly going to be up for a four-course buffet and snags pastries and toast from the canteen counter, walking slowly as not to burst in on him in a state of undress. Bones is sitting on the edge of his bed when he returns, dressed smartly in his uniform and staring absently out of the window; “Nice,” Jim grins, tossing him half the food. “Smart.” He sets about eating his own across the other side of the room, pretending he’s not watching to make sure Bones eats something. “What time do you have to be there?”

“0900 hours,” Bones mutters, glancing at the time displayed luminously above Jim’s head. “And it’s not exactly going to take me half an hour to walk down the corridor.”

Bones sets off at 0850, and Jim loiters outside the conference room with him until he’s ushered inside; then he paces off around the ship, completing circuit after circuit and thinking nothing of where he actually ends up. Bones’ career in Starfleet had been on the line before Jim had even turned up – and all the stuff he’d done to help Jim, well, better men have lost their jobs for less. Jim’s healing stomach squirms slightly with guilt, and he just hopes that Starfleet needs all the help they can get.

He stops in the middle for something to eat at the canteen, just because Bones would kill him for not keeping his strength up – then, at 1540, twenty minutes before Bones is due to leave the conference room, Jim’s waiting in the corridor outside, slumped up against the wall. It’s one of the longest twenty minutes of his life – he can’t see anything further than the three feet of corridor either side of him and the door in front, and he’s sure that every time he checks the reading on his PADD time slows itself down by half again. Fifteen hellish minutes after he arrives he registers the sound of the elevator doors; hurried footsteps come his way and Uhura bursts round the corner, looking breathless and even more irritated. “Do you know how hard it’s been to track you down?” she pants, leaning on the wall and trying to catch her breath. “Look, don’t blame me for not telling you earlier, because I didn’t know – I just heard it off a Cadet working in the medbay. The girl Leonard operated on, back on earth – it was a test.”

Jim stares at her. “What?”

“The med students call it the _Kobayashi Maru_ of medicine – ”

“The what? Look, you’re not making any sense – ”

She snaps her hand up, cutting him off. “Just _listen_ to me! The point of the _Kobayashi Maru_ is to teach a prospective commanding officer about no-win scenarios.”

“Which,” Jim interrupts, glaring at her, “there’s no such thing.”

“ _Whatever_. The medical students have to go through a similar thing – at some point during their training they’re assigned to a patient they can’t possibly hope to cure.” She glances at the conference room door. “It’s to teach them to accept that some people die.”

Jim quickly echoes the glance. “So that kid would’ve died anyway?”

“ _Yes_. The _tribunal_ he was going to would just have explained as much to him – but seeing as he was drunk when he was paged they have to spend a little more time working out what happened – not to mention all the things they’d need to find out about the last couple weeks. It’s a slap on the wrist, nothing more.”

“You’re sure?”

Uhura rolls her eyes. “Of _course_ I’m sure. I wouldn’t come tell you all this crap just to make you feel better. And could you stop off in the medbay at some point and register yourself into the computer? It’d make our lives a _hell_ of a lot easier.” She looks him over once more, tuts slightly under her breath and storms off; a few moments later Jim hears the elevator doors slide shut.

He leans back against the wall and slumps down, nearly sliding to the floor. If Uhura wasn’t lying, then Bones was _safe_ – surely there was nothing wrong with saving the world? On cue, the door to the conference room slides open; Bones steps out, beaming, and looks like he’s about to jump him in front of half of Starfleet’s admiralty. “I didn’t – it’s not – ”

“I know,” Jim grins. “Uhura told me.”

“Mr Kirk?” a female Admiral asks him kindly, and Jim nods. “Your own tribunal will be held here at 2000 hours,” she smiles, and shakes his hand. “We look forward to seeing you.”

“Goddamn, Jim,” Bones breathes, shaking his head and laughing shakily once the Admirals have filed away. “I really thought I was gone for good that time.”

Jim smiles. “I had faith in you all along, old man.” He dodges a flying punch and darts off back to the elevator, Bones helplessly pursuing him; he stops dead, causing Bones to crash wildly into the back of him. “Bones,” he says slowly, staring off into space, “what the _fuck_ am I going to wear?”

 

 

Bones’ fingers smooth over the lapels of Jim’s suit as Jim fiddles with the tie. It’s closer to a tuxedo than a suit, but it was the only thing he could get hold of, considering the circumstances, and considering the circumstances it would just have to do. Bones steps back, scanning him sharply. “Behave yourself,” he warns, looking rather stern. “I’m sure Lieutenant Sulu doesn’t want blood all over his suit.”

Jim sighs theatrically, squeezing out a grin. “I guess I’ll just have to constrain my overly-large ego for an evening.”

Bones snorts. “Ever heard the phrase ‘camel through the eye of a needle’?”

“Moses, wasn’t it?”

“Jesus,” he corrects, rather blandly. “Get going, or you’ll be late to your own tribunal.”

“ _Fashionably_ late,” Jim grins, and sort of fails to turn it into a pout. “Wish me good luck?”

Bones hits him round the head and shoves him out the door.

 

 

He’s ushered unceremoniously through the door, and he immediately feels overdressed compared to the slightly more suave uniforms the three Admirals are wearing. It’s the woman who stands to shake his hand; she introduces herself as Ellen Bakshir, and the two gruff men beside her are James Komack and Richard Barnett. “Please,” she gestures, “take a seat.”

For something he’s been freaking out over, it’s remarkably anti-climatic. He sits in front of the three of them and basically just narrates everything he’s done since he learnt of the destruction of Vulcan; occasionally they halt him to cross-check a fact but they don’t reprimand him, not once – not even when he rushes through knocking several crewmembers unconscious and hijacking valuable Starfleet machinery. Eventually he peters off, and the room settles into silence. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “So…” he drawls, glancing between the three of them; they promptly ignore him, flicking through articles on their PADD screens. Just when his palms are itching for him to get up and leave, Komack and Barnett glance between each other and the latter looks at him.

“Just one question.” Jim’s never been more ready to say _something_ in his defence. “Do you regret anything you’ve done?”

He thinks about it; his answer’s a pretty intuitive one, and it’s not like it’s the first time he’s thought about it. “My only regret, sir, is that I didn’t save more lives when I had the chance.”

Barnett half-nods and makes a note on his PADD; Jim shifts a little more, waiting for a judgement he’s starting to suspect isn’t going to come. Bakshir looks at him kindly. “We’ll convene tomorrow morning, Mr Kirk,” she explains, and Jim feels a little stunned; they can’t make a decision in front of him now? “I’ll send a message to your room with the time.”

The two other Admirals seem to be ignoring the fact he even exists; Jim mutters a thanks under his breath, slides his chair back under the table and leaves the room more confused than when he entered. He stops at the first terminal by the lifts and locates Bones, called for some sort of crisis to the medbay. (No surprises there, despite the hour.) He takes a long, winding route over there; it takes him almost half an hour, and when he arrives the crisis seems to have been averted. Bones is standing stolidly by a biobed, hip cocked, glaring at the information his PADD is bleeping at him. “I’m taking another sample tomorrow,” he tells his patient moodily, “but it looks like it’s good news so far.” He raises an eyebrow as he sees Jim enter; the politeness is a shock compared to the normal grunted greeting. “How did it go?”

Jim shrugs, shoving his hands in his pockets and standing across the other side of the bed. “They’re telling me tomorrow, fuck knows why.” He looks down absently at Bones’ patient for the first time and does a double take; Bones raises his eyebrow further.

“I take it there’s no need to introduce you to Captain Pike, then,” he quips, slipping the relevant chart in the foot of his bed.

“We’ve met before,” Pike confirms, smiling a little. He looks a hell of a lot older, and Jim knows that three years don’t put that kind of age on a person.

“The Romulans tortured you, didn’t they?”

Bones rolls his eyes. “I’ll leave you two to catch up,” he mutters, and stalks off to terrorise a frightened Ensign near the doorway.

“He’ll make a good doctor,” Pike says absently, picking at the bedsheet.

“He is a good doctor,” Jim corrects, still watching Bones at the other end of the medbay.

“I heard about your mother. I’m sorry.” Jim shrugs; everyone’s dying these days. Pike sighs, and slowly Jim looks at him. “What happened, Jim?”

“Vulcan exploded. You _were_ there.”

“You know what I mean.”

Jim scowls, scratching the back of his hand. “I missed the flight. Then I didn’t want to come any more. It was a stupid idea in the first place.” Pike chooses not to argue with him. Jim gestures absently at his legs. “How bad is it?”

Pike shrugs. “I might walk, might not. I guess it depends on your doctor friend.”

“No pressure.”

Pike smiles. “None at all.”

“Get well soon,” Jim mutters, waving a hand. “I’d have brought you something, but this was kind of a detour anyway.”

“Goodbye, Jim,” Pike says a little softly, but Jim’s already gone. He mutters to Bones he’ll see him back at the room and hotfoots it over there; he’s too tired and too grumpy to stare idly around at the stars. Besides, Pike’s been a bit of an unwelcome blast-from-the-past, complete with an irritatingly large sense of guilt. He shrugs off the tuxedo, showers and crashes straight onto the bed.


	7. Chapter 7

It’s intuition that tells Jim it’s ridiculously late when he wakes. It’s not like he’ll ever get woken up by sunlight again. He scours a hand across his face, kicking out of bed; a glance at the terminus tells him Bakshir’s expected message is still sitting in his inbox. He scans it quickly, and a glance at the chronometer tells him he’s half an hour late for his own tribunal.

He makes it to the conference room, decent if not formerly dressed, fourteen minutes later; he reaches up a fist to knock sharply, but the door glides open noiselessly to reveal an empty room. He interrogates the nearest terminus till it tells him where Bakshir’s accommodation is – her shuttle’s still docked, so they can’t have all left yet – and he breathlessly collapses against the ambassador suite’s doors, just about running the length of the ship in under three minutes. Part of him still has the dignity to cringe; stumbling into an Admiral’s quarters, messily-dressed, sweaty and panting is hardly the best introduction Starfleet’s ever seen.

Bakshir doesn’t seem surprised to see him. She snaps up the top of her case, tightens the strap down one side and transfers it to a trolley floating to her right before pacing smartly across the room and firmly shaking his hand. “Mr Kirk. I’m glad to see you managed to struggle out of bed at some point.” He starts to gabble off a frantic apology, but Bakshir laughs, waving a hand to cut him off. “Seriously, with all you’ve been through, I reckon you can be let off a late start.” Her mouth twitches in amusement. “As much as my colleagues disagree.” She types a quick command into the hover-trolley beside her, picks up her coat from the bed and starts toward the door.

“Wait!” Jim catches her arm just before she leaves. “What about – ”

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr Kirk,” Bakshir says smoothly, cutting him off. “I’d consider it an honour to work with you someday.”

Jim can do little but stare after her as she walks away.

 

 

“I guess they let me off,” he says slowly to Bones, perched on the biobed next to Pike’s. “Kinda abrupt, though, don’t you think?”

“To be honest, Jim, I don’t get what you’re complaining about. Now get your ass off that bed, I’ve got a case of Cardassian sleet-worm coming up from engineering – _somebody_ is going to tell Scotty to damn well change those sucker-tubes, and he’d better hope it ain’t me.”

 

 

Jim presses his palms against the rail, the single glass window of the observation deck stretching out twenty foot in every direction. There’s two foot of empty space between the edge of this platform and the window; through the gap he can see the floor below, the window plummeting still downwards to finish in front of a jumble of computer monitors and haggard-looking analysts.

Unsurprisingly, there’s little use at the moment for an enterprising vehicle; the Federation’s having a hard enough time keeping control of the systems it knows of, never mind places they’ve never been before. The Klingons are starting to rear their (indisputably) ugly heads, complaining about how little they were told of Nero; the surviving Vulcans are (serenely) kicking up a fuss over Jim’s destruction of the Narada, claiming that the _logical_ action would have been capture and interrogation for invaluable knowledge and material. Whilst the Federation does its best to turn Nero’s rampage into something positive and _not_ start another war, the _U.S.S. Enterprise_ has been assigned to bookkeeping jobs; police intraplanetary rows on _that_ system, keep an eye on _this_ singularity, check out the odd fluctuations in _that_ asteroid field.

At the moment, it’s slowly orbiting a star in the last stages of its life, bordering on supernova, sapping some of the last solar energy and setting up some specially Scotty-tuned dilithium batteries to absorb the blast on impact. It lets off a soft, purple light, and, being the only one on the observation deck, Jim dims the lights to ten percent and revels in it. The glass, Spock once told him at length, is similar to that used in the cell doors of the brig; the exterior is fiercely strong stuff and as to not indicate to their enemies a small but admittedly weak spot in which it could be advantageous to strike, it has the false gloss of metal alloy, making it indistinguishable from the rest of the hull. On inquiry, Jim discovers that it’s a brand-new system, being launched on their ship; he can’t help but feel slightly uneasy, but stood there, watching the star revolve tragically slower and slower, trapped in its dying moments, he reckons it’s worth the risk.

There’s a shift change; he can hear it, even through the solid doors way across the deck. The analysts beneath him don’t move. The hiss of the pneumatics tells Jim he’s no longer on his own; he glances to the door and watches Lieutenant Sulu pace across the deck to lean on the rail beside him. “They reckon it’s going to go any moment,” Jim tells him quietly, gesturing towards the star.

Sulu nods. “I’ve never actually watched one die before.” Jim licks his lips. Sulu’s watching him carefully, almost mystically illuminated by another purple flash from the star. “Are you here because of the update?” He spots Jim’s blank face and laughs. “I guess not.”

“They said something bad about me, then.”

Another nod. “There’re a group of Romulans asking for a formal tribunal,” Sulu mutters, scowling slightly out of the glass. “They reckon you should actually be punished for what you did.” He snorts. “I wouldn’t worry, though; the Federation stamped down on it straight away. I don’t know who it is, but somebody up there likes you.” _Spock_ , Jim realises, straightening slightly and smiling. Well, the elder Spock – Ambassador Spock. He said _he had something to do_ , indeed. He’s probably standing behind all the Admirals twisting their arms and scaring them shitless about tales of universe-ending paradoxes. Jim grins and, for the first time in a while, feels _safe_.

Sulu leans across the rail, his fingers tripping over each other; Jim watches them. His mother used to do that. “It seems like a bit of a hollow victory, don’t you think?” he says softly, and Jim doesn’t need to ask; the thought’s so familiar, prickling and brewing in his mind for weeks. Nero blew up his planet; he blew up Nero. It didn’t bring any of it back, or stop any of it happening. Sure, he might’ve prevented universe-ending war, but the petty, human part of him was still jumping and waving and yelling _so what?_ at the top of its voice.

What next?

“I liked the way you did it, though,” Sulu confesses, turning to face him more directly, lounging a little against the rail. “Charging in recklessly, irresponsibly – it got things done. Don’t get me wrong, Spock’s a great leader – and the Federation love him, he’s just what they need; flawlessly and consistently following the rules. But I... I don’t think there’s time for his sort of leadership anymore.”

The star goes into supernova. Bright, hot, flash; the ship judders underneath them, but stays grounded and solid beneath their feet. There’re a few heart-stopping moments of flaring fire, the reinforced glass protecting their eyes; then the viewscreen fades, the star dies, and it’s over.

“I think we need a change.”

 

 

“Jim – _Jim_ ,” Bones grunts, extracting Jim’s hands from the death grip around his upper arms and shoving him a good foot away. “At least let me take my _clothes_ off first.”

“Mmm, I don’t _know_ , Bones,” Jim breathes, breaking the space again and pushing him up against the wall. “Kinda kinky, don’t you think? What with you still there in your _doctor’s uniform_ – ”

“Jesus, Jim, what’s gotten into you? You’ve not been this damn jittery since – ”

Jim cuts him off with a roll of his eyes and a kiss. And Bones says _he_ never knows when to shut up.

Jim’s mumbling, incoherent, arching and writhing under Bones. He shimmies his hips just a little, sending him further down the mattress, curling his fingers and scraping his nails on the bottom of Bones’ spine. Bones is fucking him with a rhythm; _a bit of the old in-out, in-out_ , he thinks lethargically, and keens, skidding his nails back along Bones’ back, clutching at his shoulders and shunting down with his hips. Bones’ eyes are clamped shut above him, the force of keeping everything moving sending spiders’-webs of wrinkles sprawling out across his face, and Jim watches the sweat slide between them, trickling past his eyebrows, beading across his eyelashes. He watches Bones’ lip, caught in his teeth, little whistles of breath slipping past as he does his best not to gasp or moan, to ride it right to the very end. He can feel the dips on either side where Bones’ hands are scrunched and firmly punching the mattress, and he shunts his hips to one of them; Bones’ eyes are open and in the same instant his hand’s on his hip, he’s shoved back along the bed and he has a second to watch Bones _snap_ before he’s gone out of his mind with the rush of it, driven mad by all of it, coming on a wing and a prayer.

Jim rolls onto his side to watch Bones come down, sprawled on his back on the tiny bed and almost wheezing with the effort of drawing air back into his battered lungs. Jim traces his fingers in the pooled sweat around his navel and Bones moans roughly, a beg for more mixed with a plea for mercy.

Jim watches him blink. “Do you think I should enlist?”

Bones throws him the most scathing look. “We are _not_ talking about this now,” he rasps, and falls asleep.

 

 

“Were you being serious?”

It takes Bones four days to bring it up again. Jim shrugs. “It’s not like there’s anything else to do, is there? I can’t hitch a ride on this ship forever.”

Bones nods. “The new doctor’s arriving tomorrow,” he says absently.

“ _Ouch_ ,” Jim replies, grinning a little. “What, don’t you qualify anymore?”

“I never did qualify,” he mutters. “I’m still a damn cadet, in case you forgot.”

Jim throws him a lazy look. “You could always come to the Academy with me.”

Bones snorts. “Spending another three years in college is _not_ my idea of a good time.”

Jim, sprawled across the bed, rolls onto his stomach. “So what are you going to do instead?”

“I don’t know,” he grumbles, and leaves the room.

 

 

Bones’ replacement is a woman, much to Jim’s surprise. He tries to introduce himself as the hero who saved the universe, all charm, but gets misinterpreted as a lecherous crewman and ends up wobbling off to Bones with a nosebleed, because apparently she can _punch_.

“Hold your hand above your head,” Bones mutters, poking around his cheeks and ignoring Jim when he yelps. “It’s not broken.”

“You’re a lifesaver, Bones,” Jim mumbles, and the bleeding eventually stops. Bones looks like he’s in two minds about something, pacing around, fidgeting with the rudimentary medkit in the bathroom, reorganising it again and again. “I spoke to Spock.”

“Hmmn?”

“I, uh.” Jim coughs. “I guess I’ve outstayed my welcome.”

Bones raises an eyebrow. “They’re chucking you out?”

Jim rolls his eyes. “It was never going to be permanent. Starfleet are redistributing personnel all over the place, and if they can’t justify you being there – ”

“Then you’re not,” Bones finishes, scowling. “I wonder where that leaves me.”

Jim slumps back on the bed, scratching his stomach and staring cross-eyed at the strip of light on the ceiling. “I’m going to Risa. They’re setting up a new Academy there, and I’m going to enlist.” Jim grins. “Hey, it’s only three years late.”

Bones freezes. “You made up your mind?”

“Talking to Spock kinda spurred it on, I guess.” He sits up, staring across the room at Bones. “They’re collecting all human survivors there too, y’know, and it’s not like you can stay here any longer. It’s a one-way ticket to Risa, enlisting or not.”

 

 

The journey itself is a pain in the ass. They have to actually make it to Risa, first, which involves a four-hour shuttle flight (piloted by some obscure Ensign of the _Enterprise_ ), and then, from the sounds of it, there’s another day’s worth of check-ins and cataloguing before they can even make it out of the airport. All in all, it sounds like hell.

Spock schedules the Ensign to take them at the third shift change, when the majority of the crewmembers will either be out of their way or hotfooting it to the canteen. Jim spends the morning awkwardly saying goodbye to Scotty, Sulu and Chekov; he even tracks down the Ensign he knocked unconscious and buys him a stiff drink to apologise.

Pike’s in the medbay, in the same bed since Jim last saw him; he looks a little better, a little fuller, and he’s flexing his ankles around and testing his weight with a long walking stick. Jim watches him exercise, methodically working out the kinks in his newly-growing muscles, and they stroll to the canteen and back to give him practice. “I heard you’re enlisting,” Pike murmurs as they turn back into the medbay; he props his stick up by the wall and climbs painfully back onto his biobed. “I have to say I’m glad. We could do with more men like you.”

Jim shrugs. “There’s nothing else to do.”

Pike smiles a little wryly. “Best of luck, Jim,” he says, and shakes his hand. “Let me know how you get on.” Jim mock-salutes him in the doorway and, with a smile, walks away.

When he catches up with Bones he finds him talking softly to Uhura in the corner, and she looks like she’s close to tears; Jim realises there can’t be many cadets around anymore, and they must’ve lost a lot of friends. The conversation ends with Uhura clasping her hand around Bones’ arm and murmuring “you keep in touch, okay?”; naturally, she barrels past Jim without a sideward glance, and he yells something gentlemanly down the corridor after her.

They walk in silence to the shuttle. “You ready for this?”

Bones picks up his small duffle. “As I’ll ever be.”

Spock courteously bids them farewell beside the shuttle, customary straight back and sharp salute; Jim pulls him into a manly hug, and laughs as he watches Spock’s eyes twitch.

Then they’re in the shuttle, and they’re gone.

 

 

Jim can see even from space why the Federation decided to select Risa as the human race’s home-from-home. Despite the initially disorientating presence of two moons and two suns, the geology’s virtually the same, if a bit more tropical; it’s notorious for being a wealthy holiday resort, and vaguely resembles something like what Hawaii would look like if it spanned a planet. Most of this, though, they don’t even find out for hours after they land; they spend at least half a day in check-in, asked a variety of stupid questions (Jim, poker-faced, says yes when asked if he’s carrying any radioactive material; cue a strip-search and an hour in high-level security as he insists it’s just a joke) and ferried from one immigration officer to the next. Naturally, when Jim drops the Starfleet bombshell, they’re not exactly treated like royalty, but they at least get to sit down when they’re being spoken to.

The first night they spend in a communal youth hostel; it reminds Jim of the bunks on Delta Vega, minus the freezing cold and the space monsters. Halfway through the night an overtired elderly kitchen lady suffers a stroke, and Bones starts a half an hour long argument with the hostel staff over giving medical attention to her, by which time the paramedic has already long been and gone and taken her with him. Neither of them sleeps well – Jim because of Bones’ shouting, and Bones because of his foul mood – but there’s something amazing in waking to find the sun on your face, and they lose pretty much all of their moodiness by the time breakfast’s over.

The second day’s pretty much on par with the first. There isn’t a four-hour trek across space, sure, but there is a four-hour trek across the planet’s surface to their new designated ‘home’; the shuttle’s hot, heady and crowded, and Bones even looks a little uncomfortable, despite having just spent at least two weeks in a giant aircraft in space. Risa’s not quite as industrialised as Earth was; it has all the commodities that Earth did, especially in terms of popular brands and the like, but there are parts of it that feel less tourist-polished and more rugged and original. Starfleet have decided to build their new headquarters in the latter, rather than the former, and the town sprawling around the new building (which hasn’t even really had its foundations dug) is small, self-maintaining and comfortable. They locate their new apartment – to stop them going through ‘town planning’ twice, they decided to share – and spend a slightly more agreeable afternoon wandering around town and buying expensive smoothies with the handful of credits the shuttle pilot handed out to them.

“Jesus,” Jim beams, turning round and grinning at Bones. “There’s a freaking _beach_!” He crows in delight, taking long, running leaps towards the sand and enthusiastically immersing himself in the lukewarm water. Bones, unimpressed, sits on the sand a few feet away and watches Jim make a fool of himself in the spray, some of the other personnel sprawled around on the beach finding him entertaining enough to take pictures. Eventually, he falls down on the sand beside Bones, letting the suns cake him dry. “I bet we can see this from our apartment,” he murmurs, wriggling comfortably in the scratchy sand.

“End of the goddamn world and we still want a sea view,” Bones mutters dryly, and gets a fistful of sand in the face.

 

 

Jim enlists the next morning. There’s an office in town specially designed for it, and the queue’s not long, but it’s there. He deliberates over the courses for a bit; while Starfleet obviously want to replace their lost personnel, they can’t exactly give any idiot with a shovel the rank of commander, and the minimum course is three years. The leaflet has a warning message in big red caps to remind them that it’s highly demanding, and not just any dumb hick can sign up for it; when he tries to register he’s ushered abruptly into a side room and given a short aptitude test, and by the benevolent way he’s treated once it’s over they obviously found him good enough.

He bumps into Cassie on the way home. It’s hardly the coincidence of the century; the whole town’s devoted to housing any form of surviving academic personnel, and her previous job involved a lot of communication with Starfleet. She tells him this perched in a coffee house off the main road, and they pass an hour swapping stories while Jim sweet-talks the waitress into giving him a part-time job. “We all got divided up when we got here,” she explains, chopping a thin slice of ginger cake into perfect squares and stabbing one with her fork. “Jack went through a medical, and they found she was three months gone, so she’s working in a plantation nearer the capital; Alex – the pilot – they offered him a job around here, but he turned them down.” She smiles. “Last I heard he was planting an obscure type of potato out by Suraya Bay.” Cassie shrugs. “He seemed happy.”

“And the kids?”

Cassie nods, her mouth full of cake. “Mmm – yeah. Well, Alex turned out to be some kind of freaky child super-genius, and Starfleet has them all tucked away somewhere; he might even be here, but I haven’t seen him. As for Tim, I’m pretty sure he got relocated with most of the other kids, probably in the capital. They’re all safe, I know that at least.”

Her apartment’s on the other side of town to his and Bones’, so they say goodbye outside of the shop, switching numbers to make sure they keep in touch. Bones is talking on the comms when he gets in, so he starts unloading some of the food-pack they gave him down at the centre; Bones wanders into the doorway to watch him when he’s done. “Just Jocelyn,” he explains, grabbing a wayward apple from the fruit supply. “Giving her the new number.”

“Are they okay?”

Bones nods. “I missed Joanna’s birthday while we were on Delta Vega, which is a pain in the ass, but she just seemed relieved to know I was safe.”

Jim leans back against the counter. “I spoke to someone in the office,” he murmurs, staring Bones down. “There’s a fast-track course you can go on to get your degree, same as me.” Bones hums in half-interest, moving stacked dishes from the washer to the cupboard.

When he finishes, there’s a long silence.

“Alright, goddammit, I’ll do it,” he grumbles.

Jim smiles.

 

 

At the first opportunity, Jim blows his pay on a motorbike; half because Bones tells him not to, and half because he misses his old one. The first time he takes it out is also the first time he drives Bones on it, and the resulting journey is hair-raising, painful and life-changing (or at least on Bones’ part). Jim flips off the crash controls and remembers just how much he loves driving.

If there’s anything Risa does particularly well, it’s stunning scenery; it’s part of its charm for attracting tourists. On the first day Jim discovered the beach; within the next two months they’d hiked up a mountain, been deep-sea diving, got lost in the middle of a mini desert and been bitten by a variety of nasty reptiles in an almost-tropical forest – and all within ten miles of their new town, fast jumping towards becoming a city. The majority of the epic landscape is natural, with the occasional prod or poke from the nearby tourist office, but the most impressive landscape of all lies just outside the ten-mile radius and is completely inaccessible by foot or public transport. It’s not really much more than a glorified cliff-face, but saying that scaling it is an uphill struggle is probably the understatement of the century; the Risa Tourist Board has helpfully provided a potholed and battered track that weaves up and down in every possible direction, something they annually promise to remedy and, being a tourist board, naturally never do.

It is, therefore, the perfect destination for a first-time drive.

When Jim chunters his bike to a halt in the rudimentary vehicle-park, Bones collapses off the back of the bike, looking about ready to either punch Jim in the face or throw up. Jim leaves him to it, trundling cheerfully off across the park to a kiosk on the other side renting binoculars. There is, apparently, some form of meteor shower or something happening, and they’d made sure to weave their way up there at night to watch it clearer; meteor showers are practically a weekly event in Risa, just another tourist attraction, and hardly anyone’s turned out to see it save for them and the gangly, miserable-looking kid behind the counter.

“Give me those,” Bones snaps, snatching his pair of binoculars from Jim’s hand when he arrives. He looks a little less green than before, which Jim takes to be a good sign. “I don’t know why you talked me into this, it’s fucking freezing up here and I swear I just felt rain.”

It’s never really _cold_ on Risa; its general climate is that of a permanently sunny Mediterranean island, but in the ‘winter’ the nights are colder than the days, and despite having spent two weeks on sub-zero Delta Vega Bones and Jim have gone soft in the new climate. Ignoring escalating moans and grumbles, Jim starts up the footpath to the very highest point, rubbing his hands together to keep them warm.

“What time’s it meant to start?” Jim asks, flopping down on the damp grass and balancing the binoculars over his eyes.

“2200 hours.” Bones settles on the grass next to him, propped spread-eagled against a battered-looking and cragged rock. Jim peers through the binoculars; they turn the ground into lurid, radioactive green, but the sky is sharpened and magnified far beyond the human eye. Whenever they roam across a particularly recognisable star, it jumps into further focus, accompanied by a million little labels telling him everything from tectonic shifts to preferred sexual positions.

“Just think, Bones,” Jim sighs, a little dreamily. “We’ll see all these up _close_ one day.”

Bones snorts. “Up close and personal, for you more like.”

Jim lolls on his stomach, looking at Bones through the binoculars. “Did you hear about the memorial they’re building on Starbase 52? They’re making a cenotaph the size of freaking Russia with everyone’s names carved on the walls. Well, everyone who’s dead.”

Bones cocks an eyebrow. “A lot of good that’ll do them.”

Jim nods, stretching out comfortably. “Bureaucracy.”

Starfleet officer in three years, he thinks, and, fuck Bones’ cynicism, he’ll be out there hopping the stars. The meteor shower bursts above them, and Jim can’t help but think it’s not as impressive as blowing up the world.

Jim grins and throws Bones a sideways look. Three years of bitching and sniping to look forward to.

Hey, it’s just what they do to get by.


End file.
